Advisory Board

Luisa D. Cerar is ex VP & Managing Director for the Southern Cone & Andean Countries and is responsible for supervising the marketing of Global Crossing in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Venezuela. She joined the company in 1998 with the responsibility of establishing the first channels in South America. She succeeded in closing agreements with major companies in several countries. Before that, she worked seven years for AT&T, where she was President for Argentina and Uruguay. The growing presence of AT&T in South America was her merit. Today, she is Director at the American Chamber of Commerce in Argentina, and she is honorable member at various organizations throughout South America. Luisa is graduated in Political Science from Barnard University; New York, and in International Relations from Johns Hopkins University, Puerto Rico.

Andy Freire is a co-founder of Axialent, where he also is Chairman and CEO. Being a social and business entrepreneur, he founded and led Officenet, a revolutionary company of the office supplies retail distribution industry in Latin America. At the age of 18, he created Fundación Iniciativa for the promotion of leadership among young people. He collaborates as “expert entrepreneur” with CNN en Español in entrepreneurship issues. He was distinguished by the World Economical Forum as “Global Leader of Tomorrow”, by Endeavor Foundation as “Latin American Entrepreneur of the Year”, and he was one of the two world finalists awarded at the World Young Business Achiever Award in the Philippines in 2002. He graduated magna cum laude from Universidad de San Andrés, Argentina, with a degree in Economics, and he is attending the O.P.M. at Harvard Business School.

Gustavo Maggi is Advance Technology Manager for Cisco in Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay. Cisco is the leader company in network infrastructure equipment for Internet. Maggi joined the company in 1996 as Channels Manager, and before his current position he was Selling Manager of Sisco Systems Argentina. His professional background highlights his performance at Novell de Argentina S.A. between 1994 and 1996, where he was Regional Selling Manager for Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay and had the responsibility of launching the subsidiary of Novell Inc. in Argentina. Before that, he worked at Neat S.A. and Fate Electrónica - NEC Argentina. Gustavo has a university degree in IT from Centro de Educación en Ciencias Exactas, and a MBA from Universidad El Salvador.

Daniel Amato works for The Santa Cruz Operation Inc. (SCO) since 1991. He has been in charge of the Latin American Region for the last four years, managing more than 20 countries and four regional offices: San Pablo (Brasil), Bogota (Colombia), Mexico DF (México) and Buenos Aires (Argentina). Due to his position, it is his responsibility to encourage the development of new businesses, to coordinate the relationship with vendors, to promote more selling and to manage the human and operational resources. He also assumed the position of South American Regional Manager with the responsibility to develop marketing and selling strategies, and to manage the resources for implementing the designed actions. Daniel is Information Systems Analyst graduated from Universidad John F. Kennedy

Juan Marrone is Manager of Pegasus Venture Capital since January 2001. His responsibilities at Pegasus range from the analysis of new investment opportunities to structuring and closing of the agreements. Before joining Pegasus, Marrone was consultant at the offices of McKinsey & Co. in Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile, where he first worked as Analyst and then as Associate. Previous to his job at McKinsey, he was also consultant at Roland Berger & Partner -advising leader companies of Argentina, and at Grupo Techint. He is usually invited as lecturer for issues related to Risk Capitals and Entrepreneurship (CEMA, ITBA). Marrone gained his MBA with Honours from The Anderson School at UCLA in 1999, and his Industrial Engineer degree with Honours from Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires (ITBA) in 1994.

Marcelo Girotti is Executive VP - Product & Marketing, President of Conexia S.A, and Officer and Member of Impsat Fiber Network Senior Council. He is responsible for the entire Latin American region of the development, management and marketing of all Impsat products as well as the P&L company. He has been part of this company since 1996. Three years later he assumed as President of Impsat Argentina, and in 2000 he became President of South Region (Argentina, Chile and Peru). He was granted with the IDG award for establishing the market largest Optical Network and services, and in 2000 he was given the Security award for Businessman of the Year. Marcelo is Electronic Engineer specialized in Telecommunications graduated from Universidad Nacional de Rosario, and had assisted the Executive Development Program Forty-Fourth Session at Northwestern University, Illinois, U.S.A.

Raúl Bauer has more than 30 years of experience in the IT industry. He has been responsible of IT management at local and international organizations, and has lead projects of high technological complexity. Today, Bauer runs the office of IDC in Argentina, leader in the analysis of the IT and Communications industry. Before joining Trends Consulting Argentina, he held relevant positions in first class companies, such as IT Director at Edenor and CIO at Monsanto and at Banco Comercial del Norte / Español. As university professor he gave courses on IT Strategic Management, Project Planning and Operative Research at various private and state universities: Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad de Belgrano, Universidad del Salvador, Universidad Tecnológica Nacional. He was also professor in the MBA of Universidad del Salvador and of New York University. He has been Director of Computer Science Engineering at the Faculty of Engineer in Universidad de Buenos Aires and in Universidad Teconlógica Nacional. He is founder member of USUARIA (Argentinean Association of Computer Science and Communications Users), and has also been member of FLAI (Latin American Federation of Computer Science) and of AEI (Argentinean Foundation in the Age of Information). He is currently member of the Board of Internet Society Argentina Chapter (ISOC.ar). Raúl Bauer is Industrial Engineer graduated from Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires.

Since 1997, Verónica Viel Temperley is Director of Ashoka, the first world association of leading social entrepreneurs who, with the vision, creativity and extraordinary determination of business entrepreneurs, focus those qualities in seeking innovative solutions to social issues. Ashoka recognizes the qualities of social leaders and the potential of their models, and supports and helps them to achieve the utmost impact in the solution of social problems. There are more than 1200 social entrepreneurs in 43 countries of Asia, Afica, Europe and the Americas that form the Ashoka network. Ashoka acts like a “venture capital" in the social field. Ashoka mission is to promote the profession of Social Entrepreneur and to support its leading professionals. In order to add value to the activity of the social entrepreneurs -and to increase its impact- Ashoka makes win/win alliances with the private sector. Verónica have acquired a lot of experience in the social sector working as Coordinator at Fundación Poder Ciudadano and as Institutional Development Director at Junior Achievement. Verónica is graduated from Universidad Católica Argentina with a degree in Political Science, specialized in International Relations.