Our programs and initiatives are the result of coordinated efforts by multidisciplinary teams that include a group of outstanding innovators, supported by a participative processes to engage, enable, empower and connect local stakeholders, partners, individuals, communities and organizations around the world, from Latin American and the Caribbean to the Far East, North America and Europe.
Each member of our team has its own set of skills and adds value, diversity and perspective to a shared goal from multiple angles, giving us a deep, wide, relevant and interconnected understanding and approach to both social issues and innovation processes.
Carlos Miranda Levy, transformational innovation (Paris)
A social entrepreneur and innovator, Carlos Miranda Levy has an extensive career and field experience in Latin America, the Caribbean, USA, Africa and Asia. Acknowledged by CNN as one of the "20 Most Influential Latinos on the Internet" in the year 2000 for his work on early social networks and culture, which led him to become a Reuters Digital Vision Fellow at Stanford University, receiving the Google Developing World Scholarship in 2004-05, and later a Social Entrepreneur in Residence at the National University of Singapore.
Featured as an "established Latino leader in Silicon Valley" by Forbes Magazine on 2013, Carlos won the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation TED Global scholarship and was recognized as an Emerging Leader at MIT by the New Media Consortium. A guest lecturer on-board the Peace Boat, a Japanese cruise that travels the world promoting peace, and a Social Media Leadership Awards finalist at The Wharton School in 2013 for his work on ;Gamification and Social Media in education, his field work coordinating teams in the ground after the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan led him to the creation of Relief 2.0 and a series of models for efficient disaster preparedness, response, recovery, continuity and social and economic resilience.
Public engagement has long been a significant part of his role and commitment to give back to the community and spreading our message and vision. Carlos has been a keynote lecturer and facilitated workshops and community activities in over 20 countries, from Argentina to Turkey, including scenarios as diverse as the Amazon basin and swamps, the snowcapped Andes, small towns and thriving cities throughout South America, African urban slums, major innovation centers such as University of Chicago, MIT Media Lab and Stanford University in the USA, universities in Guatemala, Haïti, Japan, Perú and International organizations in the Caribbean islands.
Nidia Cobiella, literature, learning and Latin American culture (Argentina)
Senior educator with over 40 years of teaching experience and a relentless passion for literature. An early adopter of ed-tech since 1967, Nidia oversees our education programs and the quality of our content.
Her first hand experience as a high school and university teacher in the developing world makes sure our innovation processes remain highly relevant, accessible and in tune with local field conditions in small communities and rural areas throughout Latina America.
Since 1998, Nidia became the driving force behind the educar.org and bibliotecasvirtuales.com initiatives which engage each over 1 million teachers, readers and writers every month. For over a decade, she also served as curator of content for the CIVILA, Ciudades Virtuales Latinas project and its multiple local community sites throughout Latin America.
Robin Low: social commerce, trade and responsibility (Singapore)
With degrees from both Harvard University and the National University of Singapore, Robin combines the best of Eastern culture and the Western world, commuting throughout the year between Boston, Malaysia and Singapore, making sure operations of carbon nano-fiber eco-fabric apparel sold by Greenyarn meets the highest standards and sales goals are met in each market. His diverse skills and interests make him a very popular speaker and advisor in both the academic and corporate circles of the USA, Europe and Asia in the fields of social media, manufacturing and marketing.
As co-founder of Relief 2.0, he has raised awareness on the need of more efficient disaster response approaches with the traveling exhibit of his photos from Haiti, Japan and Nepal immediately after the earthquakes and later in the USA, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan.
Robin's social interests have led him create several socially oriented businesses in Asia, such as x-Sandals, where outcast amputee lepers manufacture innovative sandals with interchangeable straps to make a decent living.
His cat, @SatsugaiCat, has over 20,000 followers on Twitter.
Gabriela Mafort, community engagement and the new Transmedia (Brazil)
Journalist, reporter, editor and TV producer specialized in New Media, Gabriela is a Knight Fellow from Stanford University certified in knowledge management at Universidade Federal de Rio de Janeiro. In her home Brazil, she worked with others in the creation of a community TV channel in the favelas, produced the first TV press observatory, worked as a executive producer for TV Brasil, a politics and economics reporter of Jornal do Brasil and a multimedia editor and reporter for TV Globo.
Her experience in community engagement and community based channels for disaster response brought her to our Civil Innovation Lab, where her human touch and bright field experience-based insights bring value to all our media related initiatives and work.
She is now focused on the world and practice of transmedia storytelling and its potential for impact on social issues and communications.
Inmaculada Madera, higher education, complex thinking and social impact
Inmaculada's commitment to the internationalization of higher education, institutional cooperation and social empowerment of stakeholders has led her on a rich journey connecting universities and educational institutions across Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean.
With the same passion for social impact, and with the ease of years of experience and knowledge, she explores the vast depths of the discipline of complex thinking to transform it into a practical tool for building global awareness towards cultural change for individual and collective empowerment at national, regional and planetary levels.
Her solid academic background includes multiple Doctoral and Masters degrees in Pedagogic Sciences, Informatics Engineering and Knowledge Society, Business Management and Productivity, among others and in her more than 20 internationally published academic papers, reports, essays and works.
In addition to her academic responsibilities as VicePresident of Internationalization, Innovation and International Relations at UNAPEC university, she also serves as an Associated Researcher at UNESCO's International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (IESALC) regional observatories on internationalization and higher education (OBIRET) and social responsibility (ORSALC).
Naomi Bonilla Hoshikawa, girls in tech and youth engagement
Trained in computers at the Girls who Code summer internship in New York, Naomi has collaborated with "Latinas in STEM (Science, Tech, Engineering, & Math)" in the United States, assisting teachers in their summer camps since the age of 13. Driven by her passion for innovation and learning, she, along with other girls her age, self-organized their own computing club (Clave - Latinas in Code) to explore coding and new technologies.
Before her 18th birthday, she has interned for the New York Times, taught computer coding for disadvantaged kids in the Dominican Republic, fundraised tablets and school materials for kids in need and participated on an education panel at the prestigious SouthbySouthWest conference.
During the summer of 2017, she's coming to France to volunteer teaching kids from single mothers and displaced families. She's returning on to Paris on the summer of 2018.