Speakers | TEDxPlazaCibeles

Juan Verde	Marcello Girone Daloli	Beatriz Lara
Tony Chen	Juan Jimenez Rocabert	Maickel Melamed
Finn Kydland	Nuria Perez	Nikhil Goyal
Evans Wadongo	Simran Sethi	Catalina Hoffman

Tony Chen

Tony is Vice President and Servant of Movement121, a social innovation company whose vision is to transform the lives of 1,000,000 people trapped in unfathomable poverty to become self-sustaining. After 10 years of corporate development experience, Tony finally took the leap and pursued his passion for social entrepreneurship. He launched four social-integrated ventures within seven years, one of which was acquired in 2009. Tony loves working on digital/social strategies and considers his sweet spot to be “kingdom entrepreneurship for kids” – building businesses that make a lasting impact on our world’s children. Tony earned a B.S. of chemical engineering from Cornell University and an MBA in marketing and strategy from the Kellogg School of Management.

Maickel Melamed

Maickel Melamed is an Economist, Gestalt Psychotherapist and Adventure Based Consultant. He has worked ten years as a lecturer, facilitator and workshop speaker for organizations in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Costa Rica and the United States. The doctors that attended his birth said he would not live, and he lived. They also said he would not speak, and today he speaks professionally in front of masses. They said he would not be able to hike mountains or go long distances, and in 2006, he climbed the 16,427 feet high snow-capped Bolivar Peak in Venezuela and he ran the 2012 New York City Marathon in 15 hours and 22 minutes. “If you dream it, make it happen” is the motto that defines his way of living. Maickel Melamed has achieved great success by creating strategies to transform weakness or crises into opportunities, to approach life with strength and alternatives to be productive.

Simran Sethi

Named one of the top ten “eco-heroes” of the planet by the UK’s Independent and lauded as the “environmental messenger” by Vanity Fair, SimranSethi is an award-winning journalist and associate professor at the University of Kansas, where she teaches courses on sustainability and social media for social change. Sethi is the founder and curator of the website Metamorphose, an interdisciplinary exploration of the personal and cultural dimensions of transformation.Simran is the contributing author of “Ethical Markets: Growing the Green Economy,” winner of the bronze 2008 Axiom Award for Best Business Ethics Book. She has written about sustainability for Huffington Post, Metropolis Magazine, Oprah.com and the Guggenheim Museum. Simran is the former environmental correspondent for NBC News in the United States and was a frequent guest on the “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “The Today Show.” She has spoken about sustainability in China, France and throughout the United States at institutions ranging from the Commonwealth Club to Cornell University; keynoted conferences including the 140 Character Conference, the Green Business Conference and the North American Association For Environmental Education conference; and moderated panels for the White House sustainability symposium GreenGov and Clinton Global Initiative University.Simran is committed to a redefinition of environmentalism that includes voices from urban centers and rural communities.

Nikhil Goyal

Nikhil Goyal is a student at Syosset High School in New York, United States. He wrote a book: All Hands on Deck: Why America Needs a Learning Revolution to be published in September 2012. Goyal writes for the Huffington Post, guest blogs for the New York Times, and contributes to NBC Education Nation. In addition, he is an international speaker and is starting a Learning Revolution movement to shake up the American education system.

Juan Verde

Mr. Juan Verde Suárez currently serves as International Co-Chair for the reelection campaign of President Barack Obama. He is part of a select team of directors in charge of devising and leading the strategies for the campaign. In addition to developing and directing a strategy designed to mobilize millions of American citizens residing outside of the United States, Mr. Verde serves as an advisor to President Obama on international trade, Hispanic vote and Sustainability related issues.Juan Verde is also heavily involved in social issues. He was the founder and CEO of The Climate Project Spain, the Spanish branch of former Vice President Al Gore’s climate change nonprofit. He also served as president of the Fundación Biosfera (Biosphere Foundation), a nonprofit organization that promotes environmental values, sustainability, and the fight against climate change.

Nuria Perez Paredes

Nuria is a creativity trainer, an author and a speaker. She is the founder and creative director at Creativity Hospital, a company whose mission is to revive the creative spirit that lives in all of us. She helps companies and managers to overcome issues or achieve goals by introducing creativity thinking tools into their everyday work.At the moment her main passion is in education. With Creativity Hospital she teaches in schools, colleges and even visits families who want to explore the potential of creative thinking with their children. She talks about the importance of changing the traditional education system in favour of one that takes into consideration the individuality and talents of each child and she truly believes in the necessity to instil into the next generation the love for change and a willingness to innovate.She arrived back in Spain last year, after spending half her life in between Milan and London where she used to work as a copywriter and creative director in advertising. Working with clients like Coca-Cola, P&G, Renault or Nestlé taught her that creativity can be the key to transform any average thing (or person) into something remarkable and unique.Her background studies include journalism at Santiago de Compostela and Nottingham universities, copywriting at Accademia di Comunicazione in Milan, executive coaching and the therapeutic uses of creative writing at Birbeck College in London.She has two daughters and an obsession with bulldogs, cookies and brand new notebooks. And she will never, ever, be able to read a map.

Beatríz Lara

Beatríz Lara Bartolomé joined BBVA in 2006 as Director of Strategy and Innovation in the Technology and Operations area. Since 2010 she´s Chief Innovation Officer. Degree in Physics Science at the Universidad Complutense (Madrid) in 1986 and complemented it by doing a Financial Program in Harvard Business School and PDG (a MBA for senior executives) from the IESE. She started her professional career at Audiovisión Ibérica working as New Developments and Quality Manager. Her professional trajectory includes roles as Director of GSM Network Deployment for AT&T Network Systems, Director of New Market Operators and Director of Strategic Marketing in Ericsson Spain and Director of Mobile Communication Markets for Alcatel in Spain and LatAm. Currently guest speaker for international events and innovation networks. She´s spanish, married and mother of a girl.

Evans Wadongo

Evans Muchika Wadongo (born 11 March 1986) is the Chairman and Executive Director of Sustainable Development For All-Kenya (S.D.F.A-Kenya); a non-governmental organization. Mr. Wadongo has a Bsc. In Electronic and Computer Engineering from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology. During his childhood, Mr. Wadongo lived with his family in rural western Kenya, walking several kilometers to school each day. His home and school had no electricity and he used kerosene lamps for lighting.Mr. Wadongo invented a solar lamp dubbed ‘MwangaBora® ‘(Swahili for better light) in 2004; as a way to address poor education, climate change, health and poverty in rural areas in Kenya. He named the entire program: ‘Use Solar, Save Lives’. Mr. Wadongo was the founding Chairman of S.D.F.A-Kenya in 2006. SDFA-Kenya adopted ‘Use Solar, Save Lives’ program as its main focus. S.D.F.A-Kenya works in all regions in Kenya and is piloting in Malawi.Mr. Wadongo is a CNN top ten hero for 2010, a winner of the inaugural Mikhail Gorbachev Award and the Social Entrepreneur of the Year award in 2011 by Schwab Foundation. He was also named among 20 Men who will shape the next 20 years by UK’s Esquire magazine in 2011. S.D.F.A-Kenya is also a SEED award winner by UNEP/UNDP in 2011. Mr. Wadongo was among the finalists of the inaugural Innovation Prize for Africa in 2012. He has also been selected as an Olympic Torch Bearer at the 2012 London Olympics. Mr. Wadongo has been featured in most major international and local media channels and has been a mentor and speaker in schools, colleges and international conferences in several countries.

Finn Kydland

Finn Kydland is the Jeffrey Henley Professor of Economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and 2004 Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences. Professor Kydland received his B.A. from the Norwegian School of Economics (abbreviated NHH in Norwegian), and his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). After previous appointments at NHH, CMU, and the University of Texas at Austin, he joined the UCSB faculty in 2004, where he is also the director of the Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance. He is an Adjunct Professor at CMU, NHH, and University of Stavanger, and a Research Associate for the Federal Reserve Banks of Dallas and St. Louis.
Professor Kydland was awarded the Nobel Prize jointly with Professor Edward Prescott of Arizona State University. Professors Kydland and Prescott received the Nobel Prize for their research on business cycles and macroeconomic policy, specifically, the driving forces behind business cycles and the time inconsistency of economic policy. More recently, Professor Kydland has conducted research on the role of monetary policy in the aggregate economy, domestically as well as internationally. In the housing arena, empirically residential investment leads the cycle significantly in some nations, but not in others. How is this regularity related to the nature of mortgage contracts in the respective countries, in particular to the relative prevalence of fixed versus flexible nominal interest rates? Finally, Professor Kydland has studied Ireland and Argentina with the idea in mind that there is a lot for other nations’ policymakers to learn from the respective successes and failures of these two nations.

Juan Jimenez Rocabert

Juan Ramon Jimenez Rocabert, Civil Engineer by the UPM, Expert in Signature and Electronic Billing for CEPADE (UPM) and Executive MBA from the EOI.
I have worked in companies related to construction as a calculist, commercial, Project Manager and Regional Manager. I have participated in the construction of more than fifty bridges all around Spain, highlighting the bridges Round South of Talavera and the Third Millennium Bridge at Expo Zaragoza 2008.My continuos training process allows me to develop my passion for new technologies and put it into practice improving the inner workings of the companies where I worked.
Currently, I work as technical – commercial in “Castelo Soluciones Estructurales” an entrepreneurial company of construction and also I am developing several personal projects related to education (cadasegundocuenta) and industry of Iberian ham (7@s).

Marcello Girone Daloli

As a graduate in marketing & management, he worked on advertising marketing and TV sponsorship, holding positions in Milan, Barcelona & New York (on Pepsi-Cola).Driven by a need to search from within and a passion for the mountains he changed his life and moved for one year on the Himalayas. Back from Asia he has alternated between philosophic and religious studies in Italy and taking trips-pilgrimages to tackle the issue of different customs and traditions: from the Path of Santiago de Compostela to Patagonia, from an Orthodox monastery in Greece to a jeans factory in Bangalore, from the Andes to Zimbabwe, from Russia to the Atlantic ocean on a cargo ship.In his travel diaries it is expressed the spiritual and social values of his experiences. In 2006 created the humanitarian “Zimbabwe Emergency-Dam Project” in order to give water to the St. Albert Hospital, Centenary Zimbabwe and has been managing and promoting the project since its inception.In 2010 has been published Indian Jeans, the diary of this experience in Bangalore. He currently divides his time between Ferrara, Pre Saint Didier (Mont Blanc) and many cities where he gives conferences, classes and lectures about the effects on the Western lifestyle of marketing, television and globalization. He share his experiences in the hope of contributing to new reflections and promote a different use of communication strategies for better purposes.

Catalina Hoffman

Catalina Hoffman is CEO and founder member of franchise net Vitalia Centros de Día. She is graduated in PDD of IESE Business School of Navarra University. She has studied Occupational Therapy and is specialist in cognitive
stimulation. She is positioned as professional reference in the old age sector; Catalina Hoffman is a regular collaborator in different social communication media, generalist and the old age sector. Her presence emphasizes in TV as member of a social gathering in the heath’s program “+VIVIR” in Intereconomía TV. Anyway, she is member as AMADE vice president (Dependence Attention of Madrid Association), it’s belong to a Day Care Centres Commission and coordinator of Communication Area. The same way, she is member of Editorial Council of Senda Group and she belongs the TOP TEN of CEO.In 2004, Catalina Hoffman opened the first Vitalia Day Care Centre in Madrid, based in her formation and professional experience working in the old age and after watching the need growth in the old age care. With Vitalia has born a new care system and individualized attention at the old people which takes into account the physics, psychics, cognitive and social sides which affects at the person.
The experience and format in the old people care of Catalina Hoffman, has let to have an exhaustive knowledge about problems and needs of the old people to create the treatment own program, the HOFFMANN’S METHOD, about what is based the entire Vitalia Day Care Centres running.