Kent Pelisari joins the WET Center at Fresno State as associate director. Photos contributed/ illustration by Cecilia Lopez

The WET Center at Fresno State welcomes a new associate director with entrepreneurial experience going back to his college days.

Kent Pelisari joins the WET Center from years in the Central Valley startup scene offering his expertise in business consulting, product development and strategic growth.

Since 2007, the WET (Water, Energy and Technology) Center has worked with entrepreneurs in the water, energy and ag tech sectors to accelerate growth, driving more than $433 million in private and public investment.

It’s a professional opportunity that brought Pelisari and his family from Muncie, Indiana, to the Central Valley in 1996. His parents decided to relocate for a career opportunity at the Saint Gobain glass container plant in Madera.

Pelisari graduated from Clovis West High School and enrolled at Santa Monica College before transferring to CSU Long Beach, where he graduated in 2007, according to a feature on Pelisari on the WET Center website.

While attending CSU Long Beach full time, Pelisari owned and operated a Live Scan background verification business.

“The Live Scan business sparked my entrepreneurial drive and curiosity about various business sectors,” Pelisari said.

He worked for a boutique business consulting and investment banking firm called Growthink after graduation, focusing on business plans, market research and feasibility studies. After more than a decade in Los Angeles, he returned to the Valley with his wife Jennifer and sons Asher and Levi.

Pelisari was offered a chief financial officer and general manager position at Kuppa Joy Coffee House during one of this consulting engagements in the Central Valley. He transitioned from that role into a director position at the Pi Shop, a product incubator associated with Blue Dolphin Design & Engineering in Downtown Fresno. He spent more than five years there beginning in 2019.

While at the Pi Shop, he began collaborating with the WET Center, which like the Pi Shop has a business incubator.

“Over the past six years, I have attended almost every event the WET Center has hosted. I’m now part of this great organization, and I’m happy to be working with a focused and goal-oriented team here at the WET Center.”

Pelisari, who serves with WET Center Executive Director Eric Hadden, said one particular WET Center event he is anticipating contributing to this year is the 2025 Valley Ventures 9^th Cohort Industry Pitch Event.

“Another goal of mine would be to enrich and broaden the workforce opportunity bowl, and attract discrete manufacturing and processing industries to the Fresno County area,” he said. “There is a lot of potential here, and it lines up with everything we are doing at the WET Center by supporting innovation, growing the economy, and building something that lasts.”