TEDxEdges

Nicole Eifler is a motivational keynote speaker and coach. Specializing in Self-Marketing and Effective Communication, Nicole leads her clients through a personal development process that not only grows their self-confidence but also their professional success. The omnipresent call for strengthening the positions of women in business and her personal interest in this subject made her become an active driver of this development. In her coaching program Nicole supports businesswomen to reach their aspired position by taking control of their career.

Awarded Iberian Champion of Impromptu Speech 2009 by the Toastmasters‹an international keynote speakers club with over 10.000 offices worldwide‹Nicole combines her passion for public speaking with the spreading of original and inspiring ideas.

With a Diploma in Psychology by the University of Bonn, Germany, Nicole started her career as professional Trainer and Coach in the international Consulting Company TMI. There she created with clients like Deutsche Telekom and BMW Switzerland a service culture of excellence and effectively lead them trough the implementation process. Based in Lisbon she currently works as an independent consultant in Portugal and Germany.

Ricardo Vargas is the founder and CEO of Plan B Consulting, international speaker, executive coach at board level and Managing Director of TMI Portugal, Ricardo Vargas complements these activities with writing management books. He has 3 management books published  in Portugal, Spain and Brazil: “a Arte de Tornar-se Inútil” (on leadership), “Os Meios Justificam os Fins” (on managing corporate culture and ethics) and “A Vida Não dá Jeito” (on self-development).

Ricardo Vargas majored in Psychology at the University of Lisbon. He has a master’s degree in Systemic Family Therapy from the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Seville and he applies his knowledge to develop concepts and methodologies for companies and organizations. A former martial arts athlete, Ricardo Vargas accomplishes his projects’ goals with the determination of a winner.

He is responsible for, among other things, the development of international consultants for both TMI and Plan B Consulting which operate in various continents. As a speaker in diverse events in Europe and Brazil, he was named by business media in Portugal as the guru of leadership development. His methodologies and concepts are successfully implemented in multinational corporations.

Ricardo Vargas frequently writes for management publications and keeps a monthly column in the leading Portuguese Executive Digest magazine. In 2007 he was awarded Portuguese Consultant of the Year by HR Magazine and Select Vedior for the quality and innovation of the projects he designed and delivered for his clients.

Joaquim de Almeida is one of the most appraised Portuguese actors, well known in the world of the international cinema. He traveled the world working in Europe, Argentina, Mexico, United States and in Brazil in many movies and stage productions.

He left Portugal when he was 18 years old because he wanted to pursue art studies, and the Lisbon Conservatory was temporarily closed after the 1974 democratic revolution. He lived in Vienna, Austria, working in various jobs including gardening.

Won best actor award in the Cairo film festival for his performance in Retrato de Família (1992) ("Family Portrait"). Became known to the world with performance in movies such as, Good Morning, Babylon (1987), The Honorary Consul (1983) (aka "Beyond the Limit") and The Soldier (1982). He also worked in several New York City Shakespeare productions, such as, "Blood Wedding", "What Would Jeanne Moreau Do", in the "WPA Theatre" and "The Count of Mount Cristo".

In the late 1990s he started a rodízio grill restaurant named O Porcão in the docks district of Lisbon, and renamed it Xurrascão do Tejo in 2004. He lived in New York for several years, and in 2004 moved to his own house in Santa Monica, California. In 2005 he applied for American citizenship.

Mariana Cardoso is the current CEO of Gameinvest, the largest Portuguese videogame developer. Mariana holds a Marketing degree from IADE and a post-graduate Certificate in Marketing from New York University.

She has lived in several countries, where she has developed a background in media, advertising, marketing and technology. Before joining Gameinvest in August 2007, Mariana worked for Siemens Information and Communications and held several positions at YDreams, mainly in the Entertainment division.

In addition to her work at Gameinvest, Mariana is a regular author for Casual Game’s Association magazine and she is also actively involved in the IGDA (International Game Developers Association) and WIGI (Women in Games International).

Tiago Pitta e Cunha was born in Lisbon in March 1967. Degree in Law by Universidade Católica Portuguesa (1990), he is LL.M. (Legis Magister) in European and International Law by the London School of Economics and Political Science (1994).

He was Advisor to the President of the United Nations General Assembly from 1995 to 1996, and was a delegate to the 6th Committee of the UN General Assembly in 1998.

He was a Counsellor in the Permanent Mission of Portugal to the United Nations General Assembly (1999 to 2002) and represented Portugal and the EU 15 Member-States in the UN on Oceans Affairs during the Portuguese and the French EU Presidencies in 2000.

Delegate to the International Sea Bed Authority, where he was Vice-President of the Council, the UN Informal Consultative Process on Oceans and in the Assembly of State-Parties of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea.

In 2003 was appointed by the Portuguese Prime-Minister Coordinator of the Oceans Strategic Commission, a high-level working group in charge of designing the Country's national strategy for the oceans.

He was a member of the Cabinet of the European Commissioner for Maritime Affairs from November 2004 to February 2010, and was in charge of the development of the new EU Integrated Maritime Policy. He is currently Counsellor on maritime and offshore matters to the President of Portugal.

Check out our blog to read about what Tiago is going to talk at TEDxEdges.

Pedro Gama is a Partner at LeanDo Technologies, a portuguese startup focused on cutting waste in software delivery. He has a degree in Computer Engineering by Instituto Superior Técnico, and he is concluding a PhD at INESC, where he works on large-scale resource sharing.

Always keen to new technologies, he started his career developing software for mobile devices, helping companies spread their businesses everywhere, and at the same time achieving several prizes in international software competitions. Afterwards, he moved on to sales and business development roles, achieving a broad experience in the software consulting industry, in companies such as Link, WhatEverSoft and Glintt/Pararede.    

More recently, he became one of the founders of LeanDo Technologies, where he fosters pragmatic approaches to software engineering, based upon agile and lean principles. He believes that useful software can only be achieved through agile pragmatism, and so he engages companies in a daily basis, introducing user stories inclusive meetings, multi-sourcing coding cells and the universally (well... at least at LeanDo's) irrevocable principle of the 3-week long sprint.

Guta Moura Guedes is the co-founder and chair (since 2000) of the cultural non-profit association Experimenta, established in Lisbon in 1998. Director of EXD Biennale, she is currently in charge of co-curating the first programme for La Gaité, a new cultural venue in Paris set to open in December 2010 and is a communication consultant for the Music Department of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

In 2009, she was in charge of the coordination and strategic design of Allgarve Contemporary Art programme. Actively engaged in the international design community as a curator, creative director, strategist and critical thinker since the early 90’s, GMG has integrated several high-profile committees and juris, including the International Advisory Committee of “Torino 2008 World Design Capital”; the International Think Tank for the first “Six Cities Design Festival” (‘07), the Editorial Committee of “Utrecht Manifest Design2007” and the Massimo Dutti Design Award.

One of the ten guest curators featured in “& Fork”( Phaidon Press, ‘07), her articles and essays on design, culture and communication have been published in Portugal and abroad. She is currently hosting a tv talk show entitled “ Cidades Visíveis (Visible Cities), focusing on culture and creative practices in contemporary urban contexts. In recent years, she has worked as advisor to the CEO of Fundação Casa da Música and Administrator of Fundação Centro Cultural de Belém. She was distinguished by the French Government with the Ordre de Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres in 2005.

Check out our blog to read about what Guta is going to talk at TEDxEdges.

Paulo Condado, born in 1979, is currently a Postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Environmental and Sustainability Research (CENSE), sponsored by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT/MCTES), on the topic of Computers and Accessibilities under supervision of Professor Fernando Lobo. He has a PhD in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science and a degree in Computer Science and Business from the University of Algarve. During his PhD studies he was also a visiting researcher at the MIT Media Lab (USA) and Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Brazil).

He has been working on the design and use of assistive technologies. Paulo developed EasyVoice, a system which integrates speech synthesis with Voice over IP technology and text input methods to allow a person with motor impairments and voice disabilities to engage in phone conversations with a synthesized voice. His work has been published in prestigious international conferences such as the 9th ACM Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS-2007) and the 11th International Conference on Computers Helping People with Special Needs (ICCHP-2008). The EasyVoice system also got the attention of the Portuguese media, namely from the national TV stations (RTP, SIC, TVI), the national radio station TSF, the PCGUIA magazine, and some regional newspapers.

His work was praised by Jim Fruchterman, MacArthur Fellow in 2006 and a well known person in the area of Computers & Accessibility, who consider EasyVoice to be an important contribution to the field on the Benetech Blog.

His presentation, entitled “EasyVoice promoting the independence of people with speech disabilities”, describes the EasyVoice system and shows the importance of studying new interaction methods for people with disabilities.

Check out our blog to read about what Paulo is going to talk at TEDxEdges.

Maria Solange Vicente Estevens is her birth name. Solange was born within the hills of the Algarve, in the village of Cachopo, Tavira, in 1947.

Solange is the only daughter of José Estevens (one of the legendary blacksmiths of the Algarve) and Maria José dos Santos Passos, and she had the privilege of leaving home to go study to Faro.
 
Those years of study in Faro were particularly impacting in Solange's life, at the National School of Faro she had as literature professor Dr. Joaquim Magalhaes, who helped more than one generation to discover the pleasure of reading.

Solange followed her studies in Lisbon's Instituto Superior de Línguas e Administração (ISLA). She later worked as a correspondent in international companies. She also worked in Brussels in the Community which led to the European Union.

Returning to Lisbon, she completed her graduation in History at the University of Lisbon (UL).
 
As literary activity she has several articles published in various newspapers, having collaborated several times with the "Jornal do Algarve."

Currently she is a teacher and she is dedicated to story-telling and writing short stories, having published the book "Contos Breves e Outros Afectos" by the publisher Multinova, among several collaborations in other cultural projects.

Francesco Berrettini was born in 1963 in Italy. Francesco has a Degree in Economics and an MBA from the University of Bocconi in Milan, ongoing PhD in Management.

Analyst and Due diligence expert for some years in a merchant bank, strategy consultant for an international consultancy company for a customer in Eastern Europe and Portugal, gained experience on a number of transnational consultancy projects for European Union. He has been living in Portugal since 1999 and as Inesting's Managing Director since 2001, a company that grew up and now is a Google Qualified Company and has entered COTEC PME association since 2009

Francesco's company, Inesting operates in 3 fields: Web Marketing, Mobile Marketing and Training. Inesting is operating in Portugal and started its internationalization process to Brazil in 2010.

Outside of work, he is also a University lecturer in Marketing and Management in Lisbon and Algarve. A self-confessed workaholic but would also like to find time to visit Australia and Bangalore, in India.

Check out our blog to read about what Francesco is going to talk at TEDxEdges.

Carlos was  born in 1974 in Mozambique, and ended up jumping from one place to another until today - he also lived in South Africa and Brazil, where he took the first steps on stage and television. In Portugal, he lived between the north and south, between Porto Gaia, Vila do Conde, Viseu, Esposende and now Lisboa.

After experiencing the course of Public Relations and a brief incursion on the course Management of Marketing, he eventually decided to lose himself to what he likes to do best: communicate. He did radio for ten years and, among other things (his obscure past), he was a graphic designer and freelance photographer.

In 2003 he started his career as a stand-up comedian. Since then, he has done more than 500 comedy shows across the country, in theaters, auditoriums, concert-cafés, bars and half a dozen slums which are difficult to catalog, as well as more than 40 performances for companies of all sectors (from Deloitte Touche , Sonae, AstraZeneca, Europ Assistance, Microsoft Portugal, among others), with shows ranging from comedy to more serious presentations.

He was part of the central cast of the TV show "Levanta-te e Ri!", besides participating in several other programs. Since then, he has been working as a screenwriter, content director and show coordinator of various programs on Portuguese television like SIC and RTP, as well as for private organizations like the anniversary show of SL Benfica football club.

Today, besides continuing to do comedy shows, he is the scrip director of the irreverent "5 para a Meia-Noite" on the Portuguese state controled TV (RTP2) and screenwriter for several TV productions.

Carlos enjoys cooking, playing with dogs, reading scientific books and travelling without a fixed destination, he is married and has three cats and his motto is "always make new mistakes."

Check out our blog to read about what Carlos is going to talk at TEDxEdges.

Nikolaus Graf Sandizell has been the CEO of the Management Board of Arqueonautas Worldwide - Arqueologia Subaquática S.A. (www.arq.de) since 1995, and Chairman since 2009.

Having completed his baccalaureate in 1979 in Germany, Graf Sandizell (51) received a business diploma for international trade with Mannesmann A.G. (today Vodafone) in Düsseldorf.  From 1982 to 1995 Graf Sandizell worked for MAN A.G. in Mexico and Indonesia, where he was promoted to Regional Manager for MAN-Roland A.G. for Southeast Asia until 1988 and thereafter he was Managing Director for MAN-Roland in Spain and Portugal until 1995.

In August 1995 Graf Sandizell set-up a marine archaeological company with the aim to recover the cargo from endangered historical shipwrecks in a commercially viable manner and at the same time dedicate the activities to the protection of world maritime heritage. The Arqueonautas team comprises historians, surveyors, marine archaeologists, conservators and other experts involved in the Company’s activities which include archival research, obtaining survey and recovery licenses, remote sensing survey, reconnaissance, recovery, conservation of artefacts, documentation and development of scientific publications (www.arq-publications.com); PR, marketing and sales.

Arqueonautas is today the world leader in commercially structured, shallow water marine archeological projects with over 300 shipwrecks discovered resulting in 20 recovery operations, yielding over 100,000 coins and 10,000 artefacts to date.

Expeditions are financed through the sale of repetitive artefacts not classified as national heritage, VC Investors, the trade of shares through the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (QOW) and the Arqueonautas fashion line with its own Flagshops (www.arqueonautas.com).

Check out our blog to read about what Nikolaus is going to talk at TEDxEdges.