Staff

Gabriela Ramírez-Arellano, MBA  has been recognized as a thought-leader in social innovation and entrepreneurship and was named one of the Top 100 people to know in St. Louis to succeed in business as well as a Diverse Business Leader in the St. Louis region. She has appeared on St. Louis Public Radio, featured in the STL101 Speaker Series and on various panels covering topics from food entrepreneurship and construction to minority certification. Gabriela has been recognized as a Diversity Champion by the MO Department of Transportation and a Diversity and Inclusion Champion by the St. Louis Council of Construction Consumers.

Mrs. Ramírez-Arellano holds a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the University of Missouri – Columbia and an MBA from Lindenwood University.  

As program manager, Rikki is critically important to the development and coordination of CET’s programming for entrepreneurs.

Rikki comes to CET with 15 years of higher and adult education experience particularly in life-long and self-directed learning along with operations and logistics. She received her Bachelor of Science degree from Tennessee State University,  Masters of Public Administration degree from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale and Doctor of Philosophy in Education degree focusing on adult education from University of Missouri-St. Louis.

Prior to joining CET, Rikki was responsible for daily and special operations at Harris Stowe State University.  Additionally, she provided mentoring, training and development of students through their college matriculation.  She maintained operational and capital budgets, developed internal process and procedure for programming, and maintained organization procurements. Rikki is extremely passionate in adult learning, evaluation, assessment, mentoring, leadership, training and development.