About Us

Who We Are

MAPA Group is an international strategic and tactical business development firm with a premium emphasis on results. For over 18 years we have been building and executing creative and successful economic and business development strategies for our clients.

MAPA Group creates value, positioning and growth for our clients through the integration of strategic planning and tactical execution, partnership/alliance development and the use of an extensive network of contacts in the energy, technology, infrastructure, finance, legal and private and public market sectors, both domestically and internationally.

By leveraging our Principals' wide-ranging experience and networks, MAPA Group provides competitive and creative knowledge and managerial expertise. Our team includes well known business professionals, first movers in the fields of renewable energy and national energy policy, information technology and environmental science entrepreneurs, strategists with extensive managerial experiences, multinational and multicultural executives, skilled venture capitalists and mergers/acquisitions deal-makers, and government and public relations practitioners.

MAPA Group has a proven track record of assisting companies in the following fields:

• Renewable Energy including wind, solar, biomass
• Technology
• Environment and Energy Policy
• Infrastructure: Airports, Transportation, Aeronautics, and Water
• Local, Municipal, and Regional Economic Development
• Building Next Generation Stakeholder Alliances

Hemisphere Trade Services (HTS) based in Atlanta, Georgia, is a strategic business development company focused on advancing the infrastructure marketplace in the U.S. Southeast and throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Strategic business development services include: identifying and enhancing trade and investment opportunities for clients and partners in the fields of Renewable Energy & Environment, Airports and Aeronautics, Logistics and Trade, and Government Relations through Economic Development.

What We Do: Services

For over 18 years MAPA Group has found new synergies between international corporations and the needs of the US marketplace. MAPA Group leverages the multi-tiered experiences of our partners together with an active and extensive relationship network to assist our clients in establishing and growing their businesses in a way that brings commercial results and recognized intrinsic value to society.

• We have a proven track record - short & long term results for our clients since 1994.
• We provide creative, sustainable and profitable business opportunities by identifying, developing and executing new strategies for our clients.
• We invent & launch new business ventures for our clients, mostly in the environmental, energy, and IT fields.
• We identify unique applications for existing technologies and develop technology spin-offs, transfer, and commercialization of innovative technologies.
• We partner with state, regional, municipal and local governments to advance our clients’ projects and provide transformative economic development strategies and tactics.
• We maintain an active network of local partners in each U.S. state capitol to facilitate relationships
• We work closely with all stakeholders to develop and support innovative, productive and long-term business partnerships.
• We leverage our strategic business development skills and government affairs expertise to help execute unique relationships with U.S. Federal and State government bodies, providing them with economic development and job opportunities while charting our clients’ successful expansions in the U.S. marketplace.
• We develop innovative ways to widen stakeholder circles, transform traditional industries, and empower workers.
• We establish and preserve useful academic/industry & private/public sector partnerships.
• We are progressive in our vision and traditional in our values and work ethic.
• We identify and qualify potential partners for our clients, both domestically & internationally.
• We establish and enhance boundary-pushing non-profit/industry and private/public sector partnerships with accompanying metrics for performance measurement.

History

MAPA Group began operations in 1994 primarily focused on commercial Spanish and Latin American markets by introducing a concept we branded as the “triangulated Iberoamerican marketplace”. By recognizing and working with the leading infrastructure companies in these markets, and developing opportunities for U.S. expansion, MAPA Group identified synergies that were mutually beneficial to both public sector and U.S. commercial interests.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Spain was leading Europe in building out Latin American infrastructure (energy, finance, transportation, and telecommunication sectors). MAPA Group envisioned an emerging Americas marketplace for “Iberoamerican” companies from both Spain and the U.S. with these two countries as the leading global investors in the region and exchanging best practices on a continental basis.

Beginning in 1994, MAPA Group worked to develop common themes, forward-looking policy suggestions, technology insertion, and business alliances to help our clients achieve commercial success starting first with this vision and then moving to practical applications and projects.

In the process, MAPA Group has defined a new approach to building U.S. marketplace presence. Over the past 18 years, Spanish companies have responded to MAPA Group’s “Iberoamerican” marketplace vision that includes best practices and identification of unique business development opportunities involving new relationships between Spain, Latin America, and the United States.

As a result of this vision, to date MAPA Group’s clients have included leading Spanish multinationals in the wind energy, solar energy, infrastructure, industrial manufacturing, transportation concession, and research sectors. As we complete our eighteenth year, MAPA is expanding this vision beyond the Iberoamerican marketplace to include multinational corporations seeking to utilize our distinct capabilities to connect their unique technical expertise and sustainable corporate visions with emerging U.S. marketplace requirements and opportunities.

MAPA Group Firsts

• MAPA conceived and executed the US market entrance of a leading Spanish PV cell & module manufacturer which will result in a major new green economy investment. By bringing together stakeholders from all aspects of the supply chain, government agencies, commercial clients and universities, MAPA negotiated over $15 million in state incentives together with upwards of 280 megawatts of off-take commitments pledged by local utilities and the local port authority. In addition, the Client will supply modules to the nation's largest PV plant (49.9MW) east of the Rockies, sited on reclaimed mine lands to be owned by a leading investor-owned utility. The Client will construct a new PV assembly facility in NW Ohio that will create up to 330 direct manufacturing jobs plus hundreds of indirect jobs with local contractors. Together with local partners in Ohio's solar energy cluster, the Client will also develop a major R&D and workforce training center. This project vision establishes a strong home industrial base plan, and creates a complete, end-to-end, all local market cycle, where inputs are sourced locally, jobs are created locally, and a majority of the product remains in the local market, ensuring maximum economic development benefits and cost reductions. Locally sourced materials mean more jobs for local supply chains, while locally installed panels mean more jobs for installers, developers, financiers, and O&M companies.
• Pioneered the crafting and launching of the “triangulated Iberoamerican Marketplace” business development practice (Iberian Peninsula, Latin and North America) in early 1994; over the next decade MAPA helped to establish U.S. operations of many important multinational companies now leading in various U.S. sectors, especially in the fields of technology and renewable energy.
• Conceived and executed one of the first incoming overseas green economy investments resulting in a major U.S. wind energy manufacturing operation that was also the first to start building in the U.S.; first to sign and embrace an award-winning, progressive relationship with organized Labor (the United Steelworkers Union); first to transform an abandoned brownfield industrial site into a green energy manufacturing hub; first to achieve upwards of 65% USA domestic content; and the first to sign a R&D partnership with a major U.S. defense aerospace & shipbuilding prime contractor to develop and build the next generation off-shore wind turbines ‘made in the USA’. This company with overseas origins has been characterized by the U.S. media as a “model U.S. green economy company” and since 2005 has invested over $220 million in two factories, and has created 900 in-state direct good and green jobs, plus hundreds of indirect jobs with local contractors.
• Conceived, formed and executed the first international consortium joint venture to launch a green economy supply chain logistics company focusing on the U.S. Great Lakes region.
• Initiated, co-founded, situated, and currently leads CIFAL Atlanta, a United Nations agency based in Atlanta, Georgia, to support the nations in the Americas in meeting their Millennium Development Goals and infrastructure commitments towards a more sustainable present and future.
• Envisioned, co-founded with local governments and a strong, local financial institution, and helped to direct a non-profit foundation based in Barcelona, Spain dedicated to transforming the northern Mediterranean littoral into a knowledge center to attract next generation industries in the technology sector.
• Created the business plans and technology intellectual property for a company that launched in Los Angeles to provide advanced digital imaging to the movie industry. The company produced the highest resolution three dimensional models of actors ever produced.
• Helped to formulate and launch a historic partnership between the world’s largest and most successful workers’ industrial manufacturing cooperative headquartered in Spain and North America’s largest and most dynamic manufacturing union to create a “union-coop” hybrid model dedicated to revitalizing the North America manufacturing sector through greater worker empowerment and ownership.
• Envisioned and launched a new company focused on developing advanced algae growing technology for carbon capture and sequestration and for the production of biofuels and animal feed.
• Developed the logistics, local leadership, political support, and fundraising for a three-year series of Iberoamerican education summits in Atlanta, Georgia, dedicated to next generation knowledge transfer and networking, involving the top eight business schools of Spain and Latin America and many Fortune 500 companies headquartered in Georgia; raised half a million dollars with 1,000 attendees each year with this event generating significant media coverage throughout Latin American and U.S. Hispanic media outlets.
• Pioneered and helped to lead a five-year mid-Atlantic regional effort to recycle and reuse end of life electronics resulting in the formation of the National Center for Electronics Recycling (NCER).
• Helped to win, lead and execute a major competitive award from the U.S. Department of Energy for smart grid rollout nationwide on behalf of a rural cooperative utility sector client.