TEDxPlazaCibeles Speakers 2011

Cristobal is a research fellow at the Oxford Internet Institute (University of Oxford). He currently works on the EU Programme ‘K-Network’ project focused on creating a strong knowledge sharing and dissemination network in the Atlantic Area. He also works on the Socio-Economic Services for European Research Project to study social and economical implication aspects of the Internet. In 2009 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre on SKOPE, University of Oxford, supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) to study European public policy on the development of digital skills. In 2010, he was appointed to the advisory council of the Latin American 2010 Horizon Report, a global study developed by the New Media Consortium.

From 2005 to 2010 he was Professor and Director of Communication and New Technologies and editor of the educational platform of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACSO Mexico). In 2007 he coordinated of the program ‘From Information to Innovative Knowledge’ in collaboration with the University of Minnesota.

In 2005 he earned his doctorate ‘cum laude’ at the University of Barcelona, for his work on developing experimental models to optimize the interaction between humans and machines. Cobo is invited reviewer at the MIT Press.

Coral, qualified as a teacher in Britain. Started her career in England followed by some time in Egypt before finally joining the Spanish Ministry of Education/British Council “Bilingual Project” in 1998.

Coral achieved high standards of pronunciation and literacy using Jolly Phonics, amazed and delighted with the children´s excitement, interest and progress, she has founded “Jolly Centres” in Spain, where children, parents and teachers enjoy her lively training. Coral also collaborates with various Universities.

Coral has been trained by the most prestigious “Synthetic Phonics Authors” in Britain, Sue Lloyd, Debbie Hepplewhite and Ruth Miskin.

Coral is a “Jolly Ambassador” and works closely with Education Inspectors and Local Authorities; now jointly with her team of trainers delivers training all over the world

Ana Maria is a prominent online entrepreneur as CEO and founder of Openbank, which was the number one Internet banking Spain and the second in Europe at the time of its launch.She graduated Summa Cum Laude with a specialization in physics and minor in mathematics from the University of Maryland (CollegePark MD, USA) in 1972 and in 1977 she was awarded a Doctorate Cum Laude in Engineering Materials Science, University of Berkeley, California.

Currently, she is the Executive Chairman and CEO of IDEAS4ALL and director of the Global Board of ABN AMRO Bank and BAT, and has been director at the Board of Reckitt-Benckiser, making her a major figure of international banking and business. Previously Ana Maria has occupied senior positions in major internatinal corporations such as P&G, Playtex, Schweppes and Banesto.

Furthermore, she is a founding member in the board of Uplaya.com Polyphonic, a spanish-american start-up based in Savannah, USA, which is dedicated to inventions in the world of music. Ana Maria has recieved several international awards such as the International Women’s Forum”Women who make a difference” award 2007, and was mentioned as one of the 100 most influent executives in the UK in 2005

A lawyer that never exercised as such, she has been working in marketing and advertising for 30 years. First, at Darcy Masius Benton & Bowles as Account Director, WW Client Service Director (developing projects in UK, USA, France, Turkey, Scandinavia, Greece, Portugal, Morocco, Egypt, Brazil, Argentina, Russia), and Business Development Director.

Then at Ogilvy&Mather, as CEO of the Rome office. And finally she has been CEO and Vice President of Saatchi & Saatchi Spain from 1999 to 2006, and member of the European board. In 2006, Antonella started a collaboration with the famous Barcelona think tank Infonomía. Here, she studies the impact of technology and scientific discoveries in business and communications, and helps blue chip companies to develop their innovation strategies. Together with the Founder of Infonomia, Alfons Cornella, Antonella has created four years ago a special conference named Update. Update explains to managers and entrepreneurs – in 10 ideas and many examples- emerging technologies, management trends, new business models, and experiences on the edge in business, retail, tourism, education.

Prof. Dr. Michael Braungart is a German chemical engineer, founder and managing director of the EPEA (Environmental Protection and Encouragement Agency) in Hamburg and scientific director of the Hamburg Environmental Institute. Furthermore, he works as a professor of Process Engineering at the University of Applied Sciences in Lüneburg (Germany), also serving as director of an interdisciplinary materials flow management masters program.

Together with William McDonough, developed the Cradle to Cradle concept and founded the product design and development MBDC McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry in Charlottesville, Virgina, USA.

His ideas about redesigning industrial production processes in order to create a positive ecological human footprint are famous around the world and among his supporters one can find Hollywood actors like Brad Pitt, Susan Sarandon or Cameron Diaz. Film director Steven Spielberg is not only planning to make a movie about his ambitions, he also supports them with donations. Currently he holds the Cradle-to-Cradle chair at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, is a professor at the University of Twente as well as a visting professor at the TU Delft, Netherlands.

Michael Braungart, who is considered to be a visionary environmental thinker, will talk about Green ICT and future perspective.

Mario is a former Computer technician, a passionate free culture and speech advocate, and photographer. Has given lectures at the MIT in Boston, at the Communia Event in Amsterdam together with V.P. Of Creative Commons, and is a frecuent lecturer in other important events about copyright issues and digital business models, like the Digital Content Distribution Workshop by Erich Pommer Institute, first Semantic Copyright conference and others. Former P.R. at International Film Festivals, CEO of Zync.es and chief of the research and development dept. at Sync.es. Online media business expert is devoted to Creative Commons licenses and the new challenges the digital paradigm brings to the economies of scarcity and abundance.Right now he works as Chief Business Developer in Safe Creative, an online copyright registry for any kind of work and license.

Miguel is a Telecommunications Engineer, graduated from the Imperial College in London. For over 25 years he was involved in the search and application of new technologies. He was responsible for the introduction of Digital Equipment Corp. – then known as Compaq – and Acer in Uruguay, as well as technologies of Sensor and Newbridge in the areas of systems and telecommunications.

In 2005 he was appointed chairman of LATU (Technological Laboratory of Uruguay), the government agency that promotes the country’s sustainable development through innovation and transfer of solutions.

He was a sponsor of the Ceibal Plan in Uruguay, a programme based on the OLPC (One Laptop per Child) and implemented by LATU. The programme emphasized in social inclusion, technology and education, all children and teachers from public school’s received a computer with an Internet connection between November 2007 and October 2009.

Currently he serves as the President of the Ceibal Center institution created by the Uruguayan parliament in 2010 for the implementation of programs to support children and teenagers attending public education.

Miguel is also a founding partner of the Center for Strategic Studies 1815 led by Gen. Liber Seregni. He’s been involved in community work in parallel with his professional activities. His main hobby is running marathons in different parts of the world.

Dale J. (the “J” is for “Jasper”) Stephens brings a unique perspective on the future of education, talent, and innovation. He is a sought-after speaker and education expert appearing on major news networks including ABC News, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, Chronicle of Higher Education, New York Magazine, Forbes, and National Public Radio.

At 19, Dale leads UnCollege, a social movement that applies the methods of “unschooling”—the self-directed brand of homeschooling with which he was raised—to the realm of higher education. He is currently writing on a book about the opportunity cost of going to college and how to create your education from the world.

Dale spends much of his time sparing with people on Twitter who feel that the apex of American education was in 1952 or thereabouts.

Dale, his MacBook Air, and iPhone, split their time between San Francisco’s Mission district and the San Francisco International Airport.

Richard is the Chief Executive Officer of the Open Learning Exchange, Inc. He received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in clinical psychology in 1963. In the 1970′s served as Associate Dean of the Harvard’s Graduate School of Education and as Director of the university’s interfaculty Doctoral Program in Clinical Psychology and Public Practice. He has conducted research concerning assessment of social interventions and has been an advocate for early childhood education. He has served as Chair of the Massachusetts Statewide Advisory Committee for the Office for Children, as a member of the Massachusetts State Board of Education where he served both as Chair of the Selection committee for the Commissioner of Education and of the Education Reform Review Committee. He has served as Chair of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education.

Dr. Rowe has focused on domestic and global policy issues related to education and services for children, families and strong communities as well as on public policy and technical issues concerning intellectual property. The author of numerous articles and frequent speaker on the impact of digitization and global communication networks upon society, he is frequently asked by both for-profit and social-benefit organizations to assist in long-range planning, meeting facilitation and mediation. He was the Director of the Internet and Information Services team for the Dean for America presidential campaign.

Alberto has been until 2011 a member of France Telecom Spain Management Committee, and was the Director of the CEO Office. He joined Orange, (Amena) in 2001 as the New Services Director, reporting to the CEO and being member of Amena and Auna Extended Management Committee.Before joining Amena, he worked for other companies such as Grupo Prisa, the largest Spanish media conglomerate, El Pais, Canal+, Cadena Ser…), as Innovation and Technology General Director reporting to the CEO and being member of the Management Committee; Kodak, as Marketing Director (Spain and Portugal); Hewlett- Packard, as Innovation Network Worldwide Director, European Director of New Internet Services, Marketing Director for South Europe (Italy, Spain and Portugal), and IT director. He worked in the Telefónica Group Systems Engineering Division and he was Air Force Liutenant in the Electronic Warfare Division where he was awarded with the “Cross to the Aeronautical Merit” for his contributions in Radar propagation models and Digital Terrain models.

He was the Director of Innovation, Contents and Convergent Services, in which he had the responsibility of the development of convergent services, contents alliances and innovation. He has now the responsibility of the anticipation on strategic growth areas for Orange Spain like Energy, Health, Education, Networks… Alberto is Ingeniero Superior de Telecomunicación, (Master Degree in Telecommunications and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) from the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid.

He was awarded with the Fulbright Hays Scholarship, the National Scholarship for Research, the Angel Barbero Schollarship of the Politechnic University of Madrid, and he collaborated with the IBM research in Spain Digital Image Processing Lab. During his professional career has been awarded with several industry prices and honours. (IEEE research, IDC best Marketing Mgr…)

He is member of the advisory committee of the Saint Louis University, Missouri, and has collaborated with Universities, (MIT, Harvard, North Eastern, Colorado Denver, Deusto, Bilbao), and institutions (Spanish air Force, IEEE, World Economic Forum…) He was former referee of the IEEE Computer Magazine.

He is member of the board of several technology international companies and President of A&JCALERO Engineering.

Manuel is an indefinable visionary trained as an international economist, attorney, entrepreneur, and environmentalist. Manuel is fascinated with emerging and future environmental and societal issues, and weaves this passion into his work advising disruptive nonprofits and startups in Silicon Valley.Manuel is a cofounder of Plastic Pollution Coaltion, a global alliance of individuals, organizations and businesses working to stop plastic pollution and its toxic impacts on humans, animals and the environment; and the founder of Plastic Free Times, an online news source and resource on plastic pollution. Manuel is the founder of Trash Island, an organization using technology, arts, and media to provide a visceral understanding of global issues, and a participant of Midway Journey, exploring of the crisis of our consumer culture though the metaphoric island of Midway.

Director for the Americas of PeriodismoCiudadano.com and founder of Nuestra Voz, Manuel has provided key advice to many emerging nonprofits and businesses, and is currently a partner, and the Vice President of Community and Strategy of BlooSee, a San Francisco based technology company harnessing the best ocean information, and making it accessible and useful.