WALTER GOODEN, INC.
Walter Gooden (310-820-5952) was born in Panama in 1930 and moved to New York in 1957. There, at the age of 13, Walter began to fix watches and learn about their intricacies. Walter later moved to California and worked for the largest jeweler at that time, Donovan and Siemens. There he focused on higher end watches, which eventually led him to spend a few weeks in various watch factories in Switzerland. In 1976, Walter Gooden, Inc. was established with the backing of Rolex as one of its main repair centers. His business was an immediate success receiving many service requests due to the limited number of fine watch repair stores. The workload proved to be too much for Walter, so he expanded by hiring technicians. Walter says that his main difficulty was financing the business, getting it off the ground. Today his company is located in West Los Angeles and holds regular seminars for watch technicians to learn from Walter’s expertise. His main goal is to increase direct customer sales, where he says he makes more money.

AVG, INC.
Born in Columbia, Alvaro Villa (818-715-3600) moved to California in 1961 where he attended El Camino College. After graduating, he dreamed of working for Disney. He was hired, moved to Orlando, Florida and in 1971 was on the original technical development team for Disney’s theme park. Soon Alvaro was one of the top technical engineers at Disney with four patents under his belt. One day, Alvaro decided that he needed more in life. He left Disney and moved back to California to start his own company. Founded in 1978, AVG, INC. was created to fulfill the demand of animated robotics at theme parks and museums around the country. When 9/11 occurred, the company branched out into the homeland security business by creating bomb detecting robots and other devices to assist with security both domestically and internationally. Alvaro says that his business changed dramatically. He is determined to build a name for his company in homeland security industry, which is already well known in the entertainment industry.