Bio

Amber Tarrac is a second generation native of San Diego, California, Founder and CEO of FounderFuego, and the creator of FounderFuel, a free email newsletter with grants, business resources, and inspiring diverse entrepreneur stories in English y español.

Amber is Spanish and Mexican, bilingual in Spanish, and comes from a family of entrepreneurs and artists. From her father, who emigrated to the United States from Mexico City and started a small business to her sister-in-law, who emigrated from Brazil and started a small business during the pandemic (shout out to Tarrac Laser Creations and CoLabCrafts!), she honors the contributions of diverse business owners and nonprofit leaders and feels an innate drive to support them.

Amber holds an International Economic Development Council Certified Economic Developer (CEcD) credential and a California Local Economic Development Association (CALED) Advanced Institute Credential, where she is a CALED instructor. She earned her BS and Master of Public Administration from San Diego State University, where she is an adjunct professor.

She has over two decades of experience negotiating business deals in local and state government and nonprofit sectors, economic and workforce development, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI), communications, marketing, and administering small business and community grant programs.  She is skilled at engaging the arts and strategic partnerships to launch award-winning economic development programs. She accelerated a global startup, recruited, attracted, and retained top retailers, financial services, science, and technology companies nationwide. She has managed a $45 million budget and $22 million in discretionary local, state, and federal grant funds.

At the state level in California, she served small businesses in the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development and managed $15 million in employment training contracts for the Employment Training Panel. At the local level, she served as the Economic Developer for the cities of Miami Beach, Florida and Escondido, California, and the County of San Diego for 11 years, including as a policy advisor for an elected official. In community service roles, she is a past-president and CEO/Advisor for the nonprofit San Diego County Latino Association, served on the San Diego North Economic Development Council Board, and supported a nonprofit professional development institute serving California’s 58 counties.

Connect with her on LinkedIn here

“Entrepreneurship is a challenging and rewarding path and it's important to take time to reflect. Celebrate the wins - from connecting your domain to your hosting platform to landing that business deal, these are important building blocks to success.” -Amber T.