Yeri has spent over a decade in the national security arena, where he expanded the intersection between venture capital, operations, and technology. Yeri is currently the Director of Technology Scouting for the Spookstock Foundation, a non-profit that brings together disparate elements of the national security enterprise around technology and supports the education of children of fallen clandestine operators.
Yeri started his career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Bolivia as an advisor to the Prefect of Oruro on conflict management surrounding the country’s largest gold mine, large fauna conservation, and reforestation. In this capacity, Yeri managed complex relations between local activists, a large multinational corporation, and government to permit continued mining operations while preserving equity and transparency.
After Peace Corps, Yeri held positions in academia and consulting, to include: speech writing for a French candidate for OECD Secretary-General and the Women’s Forum on Economy and Society; instructor on Environmental Justice; Research Assistant for the UW Institute for Research on Poverty; and as a Visiting Instructor on Oral History at the Public University of El Alto. He also received an Inter-American Foundation (IAF) Grassroots Development Fellowship (Fullbright Equivalent) for combined work on documenting and preserving Bolivian History and research.
Yeri holds a B.A. from Whitman College in History, Philosophy, Biology, and both an MA and MIPA from the University of Wisconsin. Yeri finished ABD in Latin American Oral History, conducting research on 20th Century Latin American revolutionaries with a focus on Bolivian indigenous movements that led to Evo Morales’s MAS party.
Like Alex Harstrick and Jonathan Bronson, Yeri worked on an ambulance, but never shared a ride with them. Yeri speaks Spanish and exhibits declining levels of fluency in Portuguese, Dutch and Quichua. He was a former climbing instructor international mountaineering expedition coordinator.