About the Proxenia Foundation
A foundation for hospitality innovation.
The Proxenia Foundation is an independent Central Florida nonprofit developing programs that connect hospitality experience with entrepreneurship, education, research, and community participation.
Hospitality happens wherever people are welcomed, accommodated, fed, entertained, or guided through an experience. Hospitality-tech applies new tools and ideas to make those experiences work better for guests, employees, and operators.
The field includes hotel and restaurant systems, workforce tools, payments, guest communications, event and venue technology, transportation connections, energy management, safety, accessibility, and other solutions that improve service or operations.
These technologies share an important challenge: they must work in the real world, around real people, during live operations. A promising idea is only valuable when it solves a genuine problem, fits the way an organization works, and produces results that can be measured.
The Proxenia Foundation helps people understand that environment, prepares founders and professionals to participate in it, and creates relationships through which useful ideas can be tested and developed.
WHAT WE MEAN BY HOSPITALITY-TECH
Technology built for real human experiences.
Why Central Florida
Central Florida knows hospitality.
Few regions bring together this much operating experience, visitor-economy expertise, education, entrepreneurship, and technology. Yet those strengths do not automatically become shared knowledge or accessible pathways.
Founders can struggle to reach operators. Students and professionals may not see a route into innovation. Useful relationships often depend on individual introductions and disappear when a program or event ends.
Proxenia exists to help more of the region’s knowledge move, more people gain access to it, and more useful relationships endure.
Why PROXENIA
An institution rooted in stewardship.
In the ancient Greek world, proxenia was a public relationship between a city-state and a citizen of another community who served as its proxenos—a “public friend” who helped people from the two communities interact.
The name “Proxenia” fits the institution we are building: independent structures that help people enter unfamiliar networks, find trusted relationships, and contribute to shared work.
How the work is organized
Central Florida already has the knowledge, talent, and relationships needed to advance hospitality. The Foundation helps bring those assets into shared use, turn them into practical programs, and keep the work moving beyond any single event or individual relationship.
• RESEARCH
Steward
Bring valuable knowledge and experience into shared use.
Research, interviews, public writing, and operator participation help the Foundation understand what is changing and what the industry actually needs.
• PROGRAMS
Structure
Turn knowledge and relationships into practical programs and pathways.
Education, founder development, expert guidance, and industry partnerships give people clearer ways to participate in hospitality innovation.
• COMMUNITY
Sustain
Build relationships and resources that allow useful work to continue.
Founder Showcases, roundtables, recurring gatherings, and long-term institutional support make valuable connections easier to form—and harder to lose.
Already underway
The work is already underway.
The Foundation is being established around demonstrated work rather than a hypothetical program model.
Proxenia Accelerator cohorts have brought founders into sustained contact with operators, mentors, subject-matter experts, and investors. Founder Showcases, public writing, and recurring gatherings extend that work beyond any single session.
- Hospitality-technology founder cohorts
- Operator, mentor, and investor participation
- Founder Showcases and community gatherings
- Public writing and practical industry analysis
How the Foundation is being built
Independent by design.
The Proxenia Foundation is being developed as an independent nonprofit capable of supporting research, education, founder pathways, and community work beyond any single cohort, event, or individual relationship.
Its public responsibility includes being clear about which work is active, which work is emerging, and what still requires partners and support.
Florida nonprofit corporation
Established 2026
Federal tax-exempt application
Pending IRS determination
Founding Board
Currently being seated
Florida charitable registration
CH82070
Where you fit
There is more than one way to contribute.
Operators, founders, educators, researchers, investors, mentors, and regional partners bring different kinds of value. Explore the work already underway, or help establish the Foundation that will support it for the long term.