People who have already built the hard thing.

Asbury Lockett

General Strategy, Financial & Manufacturing Advisor

Santa Cruz SBDC

Passionate about entrepreneurship, Asbury Lockett has provided technical assistance to hundreds of start-ups and existing small businesses through the SBDC, the Women's Business Center, and the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership. He founded and ran a process improvement training and executive coaching business for five years and currently is president of a unique business asset location service. Earlier in his career, he worked with manufacturing companies where he focused on employee-driven manufacturing process improvements. He subsequently applied these same improvement techniques to administrative processes and government operations to achieve similar successful results. A product of South Central Los Angeles public schools, Asbury has an undergraduate degree in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University and graduate degrees in both Business (MBA - UC Berkeley) and Law (JD - Concord Law School at Purdue Global). He is also a certified professional executive coach.

Sebastien Torre

Innovation & Venture Capital Advisor

Santa Cruz SBDC

Sebastien Torre has 20+ years of experience leading international marketing, sales and business development teams at technology firms. Partner and founder of Venture Development International, LLC and Venture & Capital International LLC, he has participated in the US, EU and international business development, strategic marketing, venture capital funding and M&A efforts of more than 100 European and US software, hardware and wireless companies — including long-term executive roles at SWT SA (acquired by Captiva Software, then EMC) and Captaris, Inc. (acquired by OpenText). For the last ten years, alongside global executive search and capital advisory work, he has focused on co-developing Ecosystem Management Programs for transatlantic innovation and entrepreneurship. He joined the Cabrillo College Small Business Development Center in January 2025 as a Senior Consultant for the ENRICH in the USA programs. He also speaks French.

Porter Wong

Business Advisor

Santa Cruz SBDC

Porter Wong is a micro and small business technical assistance consultant with over ten years of experience, fluent in Cantonese and Mandarin. Before working with micro and small businesses he held senior executive positions at several technology companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has worked with government agencies and organisations including the U.S. Department of Commerce's Minority Business Development Agency, the California Governor's Office of Business and Economic Development, and several local government agencies.