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Dr. Eduardo da Costa
( Head of the Innovation Unit of FINEP, the Brazilian Innovation Agency )

Bio

Dr. da Costa heads the Innovation Unit of FINEP, the Brazilian Innovation Agency, where he coordinates programs for the development of SMEs through grants, loans and VC money. Before joining FINEP, he was the founder and chairman of an international consulting and training company i-Cubo (www.icubo.com.br). The company specializes in electronic government and novel Internet applications, and is located in Belmont, MA (U.S.) and São Paulo (Brazil). As a visiting scholar at Harvard/PIRP, in Cambridge, MA (U.S.) Dr. da Costa wrote Global E-commerce Strategies for Small Businesses (MIT Press, June 2001). He lectures in Brazil and internationally (in the past three years in the U.S., China, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, Switzerland) about e-commerce, e-government and the development of small businesses. Dr. da Costa holds a Ph.D. in Electronics from Southampton University in the U.K.

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Antonio José Junqueira Botelho, Ph.D
( Research Coordinator, Genesis Research Unit, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro )

Bio

Antonio José Junqueira Botelho, Ph.D. is Research Coordinator, Genesis Research Unit on Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital and Assistant Professor, Innovation Track, Graduate Program in Metrology, Quality and Innovation; both at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro - PUC Rio. He teaches graduate seminars on Technological Entrepreneurship, Strategic Management of Innovation; Silicon Valley: Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Organizations, Research Methodology and Information Society; and has taught undergraduate courses on the Political Economy of International Trade and Information Technology & Society. He is also founder and partner, Innovastrat Consulting and MPLC Brazil.

His current research deals with innovation policy; SMEs, clusters and Internet diffusion; the political economy of the IT industry; governance of university-based local systems of innovation; growth-conditioning factors of new technology-based firms in emerging economies; entrepreneurs and venture capital; early stage-financing and angel investing, SMEs, international trade, and the social impacts of ICT.

Botelho is currently principal investigator: Subsystem 4: Funding, Intellectual Property, Policy and Taxation of the project Brazilian Software Industry Information System” with the SOFTEX Society, funded by the Ministry of Science and Technology, Brazil; project “Cooperation in the Brazilian Software Industry” with the SOFTEX Society, funded by the Inter-American Development Bank; Brazil component of project “Knowledge Economy in Latin America and the Caribbean” at FLACSO (México), funded by the International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada; Brazil Country Correspondent to the project “INNO Policy TrendChart” with INTRASOFT International S.A., commissioned by the European Union; and Brazil Country Correspondent to the project “ERAWATCH research inventory II” with ERAWATCH NETWORK Asbl, commissioned by the European Union; and consultant to the project R&D Metrics for Innovation in the Electric Energy Sector, with Choice Technologies and PUC Rio, contracted by Eletropaulo AES.

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Carlos Kokron
( Managing Director, Growth Capital, Grupo Stratus )

Bio

Carlos Kokron is Managing Director, Growth Capital for Grupo Stratus in São Paulo. At Stratus he oversees two teams investing in expansion stage companies in Brazil: one investing in Applied Technology (IT, Communications, Aeronautics, Electronics, technology-based manufacturing etc.) opportunities and one investing in Greentech opportunities (renewable energy, new materials, biodiversity, environmental services etc.). He is currently on the Board of several Stratus companies such as Alog Datacenters, Senior Solution and Brazil Timber.

Prior to Stratus, Kokron was Managing Director for Intel Capital in Latin America and Director of Intel Capital for the Southwest U.S., based in Austin. At Intel Capital he directed investments of nearly $100 m in about 30 software, hardware and services companies in Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Mexico and in the United States. At Intel he invested in companies such as Automatos (now Virtus), Certisign, Spring Wireless, Navini Networks (acquired by Cisco), Sonda (IPO in Santiago).

Prior to Intel, Carlos held engineering, consulting, business development and strategic planning positions at Unocal 76 (now Chevron) in California. He started his career as a process engineer at Unilever in Brazil.

Kokron holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering and has earned his MBA from the Haas School of Business at U.C. Berkeley.

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Randy Mitchell
( International Trade Strategist for Private Equity, US Department of Commerce (ITA), United States Representative to the OECD Working Party on Entrepreneurship )

Bio

Randy Mitchell joined the International Trade Administration in June 2001, from the private sector where he had a history of entrepreneurial development in Russia, Japan, and the United States. From 1997-2001 he was founder of a start-up e-commerce company exporting U.S. consumer goods to the Japanese. In that position he built a management team that included former Fortune 500 executives including the former Chairman, CEO and President of Avon Japan. Along with his team he raised $3.5 million in venture capital financing and built strategic partnerships with some of the largest companies in Japan and the United States.

Mr. Mitchell resided in Russia from 1992 through 1996, where he built distribution networks in Moscow and St. Petersburg for U.S. and Scandinavian food and beverage brands such as Nestle (Findus), Sara Lee, Anheuser-Busch, Tyson, Subway, Campbell Soup, and others. This included working with Russian entrepreneurs in distribution, retail, and food service.

Mr. Mitchell is currently the U.S. government official responsible for private equity / venture capital and is the United States Representative to the OECD for Entrepreneurship where he actively works to export entrepreneurship. He is an alumnus of the 2005 Venture Capital Institute and currently represents the International Trade Administration on the Board of Advisors to the Latin American Venture Capital Association (LAVCA). Mr. Mitchell has also served as U.S. Secretary on bilateral venture capital working groups with the governments of Australia and the European Union. Mr. Mitchell, a speaker of Russian, has traveled to 36 countries.

At the International Trade Administration, Mr. Mitchell is responsible for:

• Supporting foreign investments of U.S. private equity / venture capital firms
• Increasing the exports of U.S. private equity and venture capital
• Enhancing the competitiveness of the U.S. private equity sector
• Enhancing the profile and importance of private equity / venture capital issues within the Department of Commerce and The White House