Last October 2017, Juan Camilo Herrera, a young entrepreneur from Bogotá, Colombia obtained an advisory fellowship which led him to visit the headquarters of ECO Green Equipment, a manufacturing company of industrial equipment for the recycling of tires in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Juan Camilo has a short, but ample experience focusing his work on efforts which benefit the environment. For example, products made from recycled tires. JC Herrera is only 22 years old. He graduated from Hult International Business School in London, UK. In addition, he has been the CEO and co-founder of Neoland for about 2 years, one of the first companies dedicated to finished products made from rubbers in Colombia. According to Herrera, “it refers to a very young industry compared to the United States.”

Juan Camilo, started “That’s why I applied for the scholarship, to learn about the production plants for rubber products, scrap tires from the United States”. In addition, Mr. Herrera said “they have experienced far more years of development than in Latin America”.

Ecoland is located in Bogota, Colombia and currently has a range of signage products for construction areas and roads. With currently only 8 employees, he has managed to position himself as a disruptive and development company, and at the forefront within his sector.

“I plan to continue investing in technology and the development of the company,” said Juan Camilo, “which in the long run will become a greater environmental control by reducing the number of used tires and providing more jobs to the population”.

During his spare time, Herrera enjoys playing golf, soccer, volleyball, playing guitar, taking long walks with Molly, his Golden Retriever; and above all, to read business development and motivational books.

“My favorite book currently is Mark Cuban’s How to Win at the Sport of Business simply because it was the book that got me focused on the business world and served as a motivation to accomplish many of the things I have achieved up until today,” he added.

“I am very grateful for all the attentions I received from ECO Green Equipment, especially from their president Brad Swenson, whom with great confidence and patience, taught me the development and construction process for tire crushing machinery and making them useful once again” while adding that he was mostly interested in ECO Green Equipment’s inclusive global approach: the international concern for unused tires and their alternative solutions, in a growing and disruptive market, with new trends of technological development.

He emphasized that he will return to visit ECO Green Equipment with another focus: to make business relationships.

“I have left friends and future business partners at ECO Green Equipment,” Juan Camilo Herrera stated with great joy and nostalgia while confident that soon his company will have reached that desired state. In other words, the development wouldn’t have made possible without that grain of sand or “granule of rubber” obtained from the learnings during his visit to the beautiful City of Salt Lake and ECO Green Equipment’s facilities.