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Better World Strategist

In 2007, I was in the middle of my university degree, and I went on a volunteering mission to Mozambique that changed my life: I discovered my deep purpose, that is to dream, plan and implement impact-driven projects that make the World better.

That experience influenced my entire career…

For 5 years I worked on social innovation, mapping the Portuguese ecosystem, training, and mentoring dozens of social entrepreneurs, collaborating with IES Social Business School.

After that, I dedicated almost 7 years to a beautiful small Portuguese city named Amarante. In here I had the role to create and manage a municipality development agency, named InvestAmarante, that works on investment attraction, entrepreneurship, economic development, tourism management and talent attraction! That’s where I met Urbact!

I participated in four Urbact Networks:

- City Centre Doctor as partner city

- Change! as partner city

- Beepathnet as partner city

- iPlace - Finding Niches for Sustainable Local Economic Development as lead partner

At iPlace, Amarante was the Lead Partner, and I was the project manager working with an amazing team, being responsible since the network concept creation, until the project final event. IPlace was a high impact project to Amarante, that created the cluster Amarante Tech Hub, today with more than 15 tech companies and several jobs.

Urbact also gave me the opportunity to participate on The Urbact University at Rotterdam, and The Urbact City Festival of Lisbon, Tallin and Paris.

=> Know more about iPlace and Local Economic Development at the iPlace mooc HERE! 

Besides these main experiences, I teach at Porto Business School and ESEP and I have my own wine, named “The Wine of the Disquiet”.

Nowadays I am the executive director of Aliados, that is a boutique innovation consulting firm that works with economic development, sustainability, and social innovation.

At Mozambique, I learned the sentence “We Are Together”, that is something that I am looking for at a lead expert role.

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Kerri is a highly-experienced urban planning, development & regeneration expert.  She has over 30 years' experience in Europe, Middle East, Asia and the Americas in public, private and NGO sectors, and with municipalities, cities, metropolitan areas and national-level Government departments & agencies.  Her experience includes all aspects of urban development, regeneration and economic development, with a particular expertise in delivering complex initiatives, often in challenging & politically-sensitive environments.  Her expertise in taking major initiatives through their full lifecycle, from concept all the way through to active use, means she is also very skilled in advising on operational requirements, restructuring and internal capacity-building. 

She is a qualified spatial planner, urban designer and project manager, and her original training as a chartered surveyor in private property development & investment gives her a strong commercial acumen. 

Kerri's is also a retained advisor to the World Bank / DG-REGIO, a Design Review Expert for UK RIBA, Editorial Board member of ThinkHouse, Board Director at International Urban Development Association (INTA), and a member of Associação Portuguesa dos Urbanistas (ECTP-CEU) and Société Française des Urbanistes (ECTP-CEU).

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Cassilda Mariza Queiroz has more than 30 years of experience in the public transportation sector. During her professional life, she assumed different roles such as Knowledge Management Director, Strategy and Corporate Development Director, and Human Resources Director, among others. She has a Ph.D. in Transportation Systems at CERIS, in the Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture at the Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon. Her thesis relates to Urban Mobility, in particular, travel behavior analysis, transportation modeling, and strategic marketing in public transportation. She has a degree in Management, a Post-graduation in Human Resources, and an MSc in Transportation Systems. Presently, she is an Invited Assistant Professor at ISCTE- Instituto Universitário de Lisboa, and a member of U-Shift Lab (Transportation Lab/ IST - Instituto Superior Técnico) member. She has publications as an author and she is a reviewer of Journals publications. Certified Project Management (PMP) and was the Vice President of PMI(Project Management Institute). Certified Product Owner (CSPO). She is also on the UITP Research in Mobility Committee (RIMC), UITP Business and Human Resources Management Committee (BHRM), and a member of the Supervisory Board of INDEG- Executive Education. Internationally she also represented the Lisbon Metro in the Metro Benchmarking Group (NOVA/COMET), and Bus Benchmarking Group (IBBG). Her experience in the industry and academic perspective grant her the profile for the scope of the URBACT experts.

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André Cester Costa is Head of Unit for National Policies of INOVA+, a leading firm in innovation studies in Europe. He provides technical and strategic support to municipalities, associations of municipalities and other public administration entities in the execution of policies for the development and economic attractiveness, transformation and innovation of territories. 

Before, as Head Office for Economic Development in the City of Aveiro [Portugal], he was project coordinator of four URBACT projects focused on Jobs and Skills and Knowledge Economy.

He was also the project manager of Aveiro Steam City [co-financed by Urban Innovation Actions] and of the Aveiro Tech City Initiative, that granted the Portuguese city of Aveiro the title of 3rd Rising Innovative City in Europe in 2022, awarded by the European Innovation Council.

For over 20 years he has been working in different projects under European Programmes such as, URBACT, INTERREG Atlantic, INTERREG SUDOE, HORIZON 2020 or UIA.

He was also the coordinator for the development of the Sustainable Urban Development Strategy for Aveiro [PEDUCA] and a member of the Executive Commission of the bid of Aveiro to become European Capital of Culture 2027.

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