Wellness + Civic Cohesion
SYNERGY is a purpose-driven incubator unifying wellness, economic advancement and cultural exchange under one roof.
Our select group of innovators are granted access to Cohesion Synergy’s campus and technology in order to build groundbreaking solutions across regenerative economics, urban infrastructure, collaborative AI, robotics, 3D printing and more.
By actively dissolving barriers between the brightest minds and bleeding-edge technology, we future-proof our world for tomorrow.
People First
Health, learning, and opportunity aren't perks added at the end — they're the reason the building exists.
Civic Innovation
Infrastructure works with local health systems and city rules from day one — so partners can say yes without a fight.
Regenerative Systems
Energy, food, money, and research loop back into the community instead of draining out. Regenerative Systems gives more than they take.
Evidence + Impact
Proof, not promises. We count real results — jobs, health, savings, and paths to owning a home — and report them.
Wellness & Civic Cohesion
This is where people integrate with COHESION Synergy Hubs. Every Hub runs interconnected with a suite of operations within each level — so care, work, culture, and community all live in a shared ecosystem.
First Build: Wichita
Wellness Runs Through It
Flexible, Rule-Abiding Funding
Big Ideas, One Address
Jobs and Ownership by Design
It Starts With a Conversation
The Lab Is Inside
AI That Keeps Everyone in Sync
Food Grown On Site
Culture That Opens the Doors
Regenerative canopy and residency. The geodesic AgTech dome grows food and runs closed-loop environmental systems while the co-living pods house the resident cohort — production and dwelling proven under one roof.
The operating spine, carrier by carrier.
Nine carriers, one continuous logic — the same methodology that shapes every Hub, Station, and Campus. Select a carrier to read how it operates.
Cooperation
Partnership as operating logic, not overlay.
Cooperation closes the loop: civic, capital, and community actors share one execution plan rather than parallel, uncoordinated tracks — the difference between a partnership and a pipeline of separate asks.
Strategic Scope
Big enough to matter to a whole city, small enough to build on a single block.
Build Once, Repeat Anywhere
Health Is the Baseline
FACE Market
Tech That Serves People
Many Ways to Fund It
Works With the City
Capital Spine + Pilot Ground
The Capital Spine ties real community results to a model that can be financed in real time. Funding comes in tiered-steps; proven on the first pilot. The numbers below are planning targets, not commitments.
Planning allocation for the pre-seed round, not an offer to sell securities. Figures are planning targets subject to definitive documents and diligence.
One Pilot, Many Copies
Money Follows Proof
Step by Step, Gate by Gate
Many Income Streams, One Roof
Where the Money Comes From
- ◆City and philanthropic funding
- ◆Digital and mission-aligned capital
- ◆Institutional infrastructure investors
- ◆Anchor partners investing alongside us
Where the Money Goes
- ◆Getting the site ready and vetted
- ◆Building the main hub and modular pods
- ◆Running the place and its first cohort
- ◆Reserves for partners and long-term care
Community Benefit + Validation
Helping the community isn't a side effect here — it's the plan. We measure results, share them openly, and improve with each group we serve.
Real Jobs, Trained On Site
Care That Connects
Money Skills That Stick
From Renting to Owning
We Keep the Receipts
Earn the Right to Grow
Listen, test, measure, adjust, repeat. That loop is the only way we go from Wichita to a second city.
Ecosystem Partner Readiness
We didn't wait to start relationships. Real partners are already lined up across health, community, capital, and legacy.
Dr. Natanya Wachtel — NSN
Ryan Castle — Whole Health
Timothy Cox — West End CDE
Friends of the African Union (FAU)
Ellyn Ito — mindvybe
Joie Pemhiwa — Sub-Saharan Africa & Continental Governance
Curious to help build the ecosystem? Join the Co-Creators inner circle.
The First 90 Days
- ◆01 — Lock in the health and community partners.
- ◆02 — Package the pilot report for funders to review.
- ◆03 — Qualify the site and start the main build.
- ◆04 — Welcome the first group and start measuring results.
Partnerships start with a real conversation, not a sales pitch. We do the homework — vetting, compliance, and trust — before anyone commits.
Core Leadership + Executive Advisory Architecture
WEL + COHESION is structured as a multi-layer ecosystem team combining vision, capital, governance, clinical innovation, AI ethics, cultural wellness, infrastructure, education, and global civic strategy.
The core leadership group carries the operating spine. The executive advisory board strengthens domain credibility, committee review, capital readiness, risk posture, and strategic deployment.
1. Core Leadership Architecture
Blake Edwards-El
Blake Edwards-El is the Founder of MKBLV.WORLD, Founder of COHESION SYNERGY HUBS©️, and Co-Founder of WEL + COHESION, serving as Chief Visionary Officer, Managing Partner, and Ecosystem Architect across the platform.
He leads the vision, systems architecture, and cultural technology layer connecting spatial computing, neural wellness, micro data center infrastructure, humanitarian AI, edutainment, regenerative civic development, and Cultural Wellness™ into one deployable ecosystem.
A former young aviation manufacturing / TRAC aerospace engineer at Boeing / Spirit, Blake brings production logic, design intelligence, and neurodiverse pattern recognition into platform-building. His work translates complexity into felt, buildable, and fundable systems that move culture, capital, wellness, and infrastructure together.
At the core, Blake’s role is to architect the bridge between vision and execution — turning cultural signal, civic need, and infrastructure opportunity into COHESION’s operating model.
Joshua Kimbrough-El
Joshua Kimbrough-El is a Co-Founder of WEL + COHESION, Founder of WEL9, and serves as Capital Chair, Principal, and Managing Partner across the ecosystem. His work centers on regenerative economics, private lending strategy, family office alignment, capital architecture, and community-backed infrastructure finance.
As the originator of WEL9, Joshua brings the economic philosophy behind wellness, ownership, and community circulation into the COHESION platform. He helps structure capital pathways that support housing, infrastructure, wellness systems, entrepreneurship, and long-term community wealth.
Jimmie Lee
Jimmie Lee serves as Chair Advisor and Principal Partner across SOTERIA Ltd., the governance layer within WEL + COHESION. His role supports executive structure, fiduciary posture, institutional readiness, deep-tech strategy, and long-term ecosystem governance.
Inside WEL + COHESION, Jimmie helps protect the integrity of the vision as it moves from founder-led momentum into durable institutional architecture. His work directly aligns with the COHESION mission: building systems that reunify culture, capital, wellness, technology, and civic infrastructure into platforms that can outlast their creators.
Dr. Natanya Wachtel
Dr. Natanya Wachtel serves as Clinical Innovation Chair and Director of COHESION Synergy Hubs, anchoring the ecosystem’s behavioral science, mental wellness, health innovation, and human-centered design layer.
As Founder of New Solutions Network, Dr. Wachtel brings experience across mental wellness, life sciences, health innovation, behavioral-science-informed strategy, and impact-driven ecosystem development. Her role ensures COHESION is not only buildable and fundable, but clinically aware, emotionally intelligent, and designed around people actually healing, learning, and thriving.
Carmen Lam — KA LA
Carmen Lam serves as AI Governance & Cultural Risk Chair and Bilingual Compliance Advisor for WEL + COHESION, supporting ethical technology deployment, multilingual risk review, fintech compliance, and AI governance across community-facing systems.
With 16 years of telecom retail and technical risk management experience serving 20,000+ immigrant households, Carmen brings rare frontline insight into consumer fraud, identity theft, predatory contracts, and technology failure patterns affecting vulnerable communities. Her role helps stress-test AI, fintech, and digital infrastructure before deployment so COHESION scales with cultural awareness, legal sensitivity, and real-world accountability.
Nigel Johnson
Nigel Johnson serves as Housing & Ownership Chair for WEL + COHESION, leading the affordable housing strategy and pathways to ownership across the platform. A generational real estate investor and educator with board-level housing and HUD-adjacent perspective, he brings decades of experience in real estate deployment, co-living, and community wealth-building.
His role ensures the COHESION built environment is not just housing but a ladder — turning residents into owners through New Urban development models, ownership pathways, and real estate operating logic that keeps value circulating in the community.
Joie Pemhiwa
Joie Pemhiwa serves as Director of Market Development, Sub-Saharan Africa and Continental Strategy & Governance Ecosystem Partner within WEL + COHESION. Born in Nairobi, Kenya, he brings a systems-level approach across governance, cybersecurity, infrastructure readiness, and regional partnership strategy — translating complex opportunities into grounded, trusted pathways for African-led growth.
Author of The Continental Covenant, a governance framework informed by indigenous African traditions, Joie strengthens the Africa-facing strategy layer inside COHESION — ensuring regional development is a partnership rooted in self-determination, cultural sovereignty, and institutional trust, not imported deployment.
Chairman Hershel Daniels Jr.
Chairman Hershel Daniels Jr. serves as Elder Advisor and Global Civic Legacy Chair for WEL + COHESION, supporting high-level alignment across government, private sector strategy, African diaspora development, historical cultural wellness, and long-range civic infrastructure.
His advisory role helps connect COHESION to public-private pathways, FAU / IDIQ-aligned implementation logic, African Union and diaspora-facing frameworks, Juneteenth cultural mobilization, and people-first economic development. Chairman Daniels brings elder wisdom, historical continuity, and global government fluency to the ecosystem — helping the work move with cultural memory, institutional discipline, and legacy responsibility.
2. Core Team Map
| Leader | Primary Seat | Ecosystem Function |
|---|---|---|
| Blake Edwards-El | CVO / Managing Partner | Vision, ecosystem architecture, spatial computing, cultural technology |
| Joshua Kimbrough-El | Co-Founder / Capital Chair | Capital architecture, WEL9, regenerative economics, family office pathways |
| Jimmie Lee | Chair Advisor / Principal Partner | Governance, institutional stewardship, executive structure, SOTERIA Ltd. |
| Dr. Natanya Wachtel | Clinical Innovation Chair | Behavioral science, neural wellness, clinical innovation, human performance |
| Carmen Lam | AI Governance & Cultural Risk Chair | AI ethics, bilingual compliance, cultural risk, fintech exposure review |
| Nigel Johnson | Housing & Ownership Chair | Affordable housing, pathways to ownership, real estate deployment, co-living, community wealth |
| Joie Pemhiwa | Sub-Saharan Africa Market Development / Continental Governance Strategy | Regional market entry, cybersecurity-aware governance, African-led institutional frameworks, ecosystem development |
| Chairman Hershel Daniels Jr. | Elder Advisor / Global Civic Legacy Chair | Global government, diaspora strategy, cultural wellness, civic legacy |
| Ellyn Ito | Restorative Neurotechnology / Human Flourishing Ecosystem Partner | Non-invasive neurotechnology, nervous-system recovery, human flourishing |
3. Executive Advisory Board
Active Roster + Committee Alignment. The Executive Advisory Board supports the ecosystem through domain expertise, committee review, strategic relationship mapping, risk guidance, and deployment readiness. This roster reflects active or completed-signature advisory alignment for the current charter version. Pending sign-ons and honorary network relationships are intentionally excluded from the formal governance roster.
| Advisor | Primary Domain | Strategic Value to Ecosystem | Committee Fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Curtis Whitten | Private sector security / government contracting ally | President, Vend Tech Enterprises; family and advisor; brings high-clearance and public-sector security knowledge across Zone 6 contracting context. | Ethics, Governance, Risk & Ecosystem Security |
| Joshua D. Mosshart, MSMF | Energy, infrastructure, scale architecture | Co-Founder, Zenthium.ai; Co-Chair, Malia Ventures; President, Energy Development Partners; chief strategist and business scaler aligned with composable infrastructure, EaaS, and deployment sequencing. | Compute, Energy & Infrastructure / Capital |
| Max Rosen | Payments, crypto, family-office network access | Founder of Vantack; supports stablecoin and crypto payment infrastructure, family office network access, distribution, PR, and growth infrastructure. | Capital, Regenerative Economics & Tokenization / FACE Market Development |
| Dr. Natanya Wachtel | Behavioral science, wellness strategy, media, AI-health integration | Clinical Innovation Chair and Founder of New Solutions Network; brings neuroscience, human performance, behavior change, wellness systems, and narrative intelligence into the hub model. | Health, Science & Human Performance |
| Damu Winston, MBA, PMP | Capital markets, tokenization, enterprise partnership | Investor and boardroom advisor with tokenization, AI, enterprise partnership, and digital-asset orientation; bridges strategic capital with emerging infrastructure layers. | Capital, Regenerative Economics & Tokenization |
| Prof. Dr. Helmar Grabner, MBA | Higher education, licensing, accreditation | Director of Global Humanistic University with licensing and awarding-power context relevant to certification, higher education, international academic pathways, and workforce credentialing. | Education, Licensing & Certification |
| Dr. Anthony Will, PhD | Engineering, simulation, vehicle systems | Senior engineer and educator with patents and deep expertise in vehicle modeling, HWIL, propulsion systems, dynamics, validation, and advanced electric-motion control systems. | Compute, Energy & Infrastructure / R&D |
| Cory Warfield | Tech-for-good growth, coaching, UBI-adjacent thinking | Supports growth, influence, editorial positioning, founder support, and future-of-work / future-of-economics conversation spaces. | FACE Market Development / Capital & Narrative |
| James Googe | Brand strategy and experiential marketing | Senior marketer with 20+ years of national branding experience across major consumer brands, plus culturally rooted activation design. | FACE Market Development / Culture & Partnerships |
4. Executive Committee Structure
Vision, Ecosystem Architecture & Cultural Technology
Capital, Regenerative Economics & Tokenization
Governance, Risk & Institutional Stewardship
Clinical Innovation, Human Performance & Wellness Systems
Compute, Energy & Infrastructure
Real Estate, Housing & Built Environment
Education, Licensing & Certification
Global Civic Legacy, Diaspora Strategy & Africa Market Development
5. Advisor Operating Expectations
Executive advisors are expected to support the ecosystem with discipline, clarity, and restraint.
- Advise within their stated domain and avoid overreach beyond proven expertise.
- Disclose material conflicts, competing interests, or sensitive relationship overlap.
- Avoid publicly representing formal partnership, government alignment, or capital commitment without written approval.
- Respect restricted information tiers, NDA terms, and non-circumvent protocols.
- Support committee review, signal quality, documentation, and ecosystem trust.
- Strengthen the platform without creating extraction, confusion, or premature public claims.
- Help move qualified opportunities toward readiness, not hype.
- Preserve the COHESION standard: fundable, deployable, culturally grounded, and institution-ready.
6. Simple Positioning Statement
The WEL + COHESION team is intentionally built as a multi-disciplinary operating council.
Blake carries the vision and ecosystem architecture. Joshua structures the capital and regenerative economics. Jimmie protects governance and institutional readiness. Dr. Natanya anchors wellness and human performance. Carmen protects AI, fintech, language, and cultural risk. Nigel leads affordable housing and pathways to ownership. Joie leads Sub-Saharan Africa market development and continental governance strategy. Chairman Daniels provides elder guidance across government, diaspora, and civic legacy. Ellyn brings restorative neurotechnology and human flourishing.
The executive advisors extend the platform into energy, infrastructure, housing, education, brand, capital markets, security, tokenization, and cultural deployment.
Together, this creates a team that can speak to cities, capital, community, culture, and infrastructure without losing the mission.