Born in Havana, Cuba, Maikel Parets immigrated to Canada in 1999 after graduating from the Polytechnic Institute of Chemistry and obtaining a Diploma in Pharmaceutical Technology.

His passion for internet technology started in 2001 when he began working as technical support agent for one of the biggest broadband internet companies in the world. A year later Maikel was traveling with the company to set up new contact centers all over North America, and he was directly responsible for training hundreds of new and existing agents for the organization.

Maikel Social Media work began in 2011 when he started working as a brand ambassador for Samsung Mobile. The main objective was to promote Samsung’s upcoming mobile devices to his followers using social media and becoming a trusted advisor to them by writing blogs, making video reviews and reporting from live events. Maikel Parets was then invited to travel to Barcelona, Spain for the mobile world congress and London, England and uses social media to support the new product launch. This gave him an idea: that if he, a regular guy, was doing this for such a big company like Samsung, with nothing more than a Facebook account and some time to write, why can’t he do the same thing and help local businesses.

He became a Hootsuite Certified Professional and that’s how Mapa Social was born! Maikel is a first degree black belt in Taekwondo, working on his black belt in Hapkido (a Korean martial art of self-defense) When he’s not training, he’s working on his Cuban salsa moves or teaching kids how to dance Latin dances at his daughter’s elementary school. He also volunteers as a Social Media Coordinator for Latincouver, a Non-Profit organization helping Latinos settle in BC.

Most recently, Maikel was nominated as one of Richmond’s top Entrepreneurs by the Richmond Chamber of Commerce and was selected as a finalist on their Business Excellence Awards, for Young Entrepreneur of the Year