Editor’s note: KCultivators is a lighthearted profile series to highlight people who are meaningfully enriching Kansas City’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
Kansas City is far from dry when it comes to opportunity, Becca Castro said, recalling her desert upbringing and admittedly low expectations for what a life in the Midwest could look like.
“I just thought, ‘Who would want to live there?’” she joked, recalling how her parents had moved to the metro during her college years — as did her future husband, prompting her to follow suit. She quickly gained a new understanding of the pride that overflows in the City of Fountains.
“I fell in love with the city. I realized this is where my kids are going to grow up — and I wanted to contribute,” Castro explained, noting such a realization triggered a chain reaction for her career path which had spanned industries from public relations and corporate innovation to contracting with the Department of Defense.
“I took a year off to be with my kids and to think about how I could integrate into this community.”
Castro’s time of grounding and reflection led her in 2019 to a position with the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, working largely on workforce development-related initiatives.
“I am a builder by nature — and we were were building something from scratch. It was a great experience and I really got to know people in Kansas City,” she recalled, adding that the project she was working on didn’t materialize past the COVID-19 pandemic — but set her on a similar path with the Economic Development Corporation of Kansas City and LaunchKC, and later toward her current role as senior director and network builder at KCSourceLink.
“When I was a little kid, I wasn’t like, ‘Oh, I want to be an ecosystem builder.’ Ecosystem building wasn’t a thing. But I fell into it,” Castro said.
“It’s a team sport. I love to collaborate. … Innovation and thinking about the unlikely partnerships, how we can apply what is working in one place to a different place. I love crossboundary [work] and ecosystem building allows for that,” she said.
“It has a lot to do with love of place — and I grew to love Kansas City and I have a lot of pride, because while there’s always room for growth, we have a lot of great elements here.”
Castro shared more about her Kansas City experience, passions, and her current Taylor Swift era with Startland as part of its KCultivator Q&A series.
Becca Castro, center, poses for a crew photo during GEWKC at the Titanic exhibit in Union Station alongside KCSourceLink navigators, connectors and other teammates; courtesy photo
If you were branding Kansas City with an emoji, which would it be?
First thing that comes to mind is a rocket — we’re on the rise.
Tomorrow morning you wake up the governor of Missouri. What is your first order of business?
[Offering] angel tax credits, funding the office of entrepreneurship at the state level, and reinstating MTC funding.
If your organization was a sandwich, what would be the key ingredients?
The bread would be collaboration, the meat would be data driven [process] improvement, the lettuce would be convening with a purpose, the tomato would be providing the pulse on entrepreneurship in Kansas City for other ESO’s. There would be a sriracha mayo — which adds the fun. We’d be on a plate with some chips and a pickle [representing] entrepreneurs. We’d have all the components of an ecosystem.
Which Taylor Swift era are you currently in?
My daughter and I talk about this a lot. I’m in TTPD (The Tortured Poets Department) — I love Folklore, Evermore, Midnights.
What is your guilty pleasure TV show?
I just watched “The Summer I Turned Pretty.” And, as an almost-50-year old woman I’m like, this is just so enjoyable. There’s lots of Taylor Swift — and I will say, I recommend the soundtrack. There’s jazz, pop, and throwbacks to my high school [days]. Smashing Pumpkins, Beck. You can just put it on shuffle.
Do you have a startup idea you don’t mind readers stealing?
I go through phases where I have all these ideas and I always call my brother-in-law — because he’s a serial entrepreneur. The last one was probably around the mental load that, traditionally, women carry. So, something that is AI driven and combines the Skylight calendar concept … and just reminds you, “Hey, it’s time to take your dog to the vet.” And with the AI, human aspect it can make those appointments for you and covers all those aspects of your life. It probably exists — but not to the extent that I want it to fully automate my life.
Who in your life inspires you?
My kids are a big piece of it. I want to create a better world for them and set a good example.
But, I [often] think about my grandfather’s story. He grew up in South El Paso and started a TV and radio repair shop. … Just a tiny little shop, where my great grandmother lived in the back. And I remember going down there and seeing all these tvs and radios from different eras — in various states of disrepair, and him just tinkering around in there.
He had one of those old Mexican coke dispensers that would dispense the glass bottles. That was also a highlight — we would get a really good Coca Cola.
But when I think about ecosystem building and entrepreneurship, it’s something that is accessible to anyone and it’s a way to generate wealth for everyone — and that truly happened for him. He put four kids through college — all first generation. He lived an amazing life and it all came from his ingenuity and hard work.
That is super inspiring in the work we do today. And I always think, what am I doing now that my kids will look back on? I’m on a trajectory that he created — how do I continue that for my family?
What is your mantra or motto?
“You see what you look for.”
It’s a reminder that whatever you focus on, I believe, manifests. Make sure you’re in alignment in terms of what you’re thinking about, what you’re working on, who you’re surrounding yourself with. And in times where I’ve felt more powerless, and can only see the negative, it’s helped me to recalibrate.
