Never Help: engage, enable, empower and connect.

Social entrepreneur and innovation and technology expert with over 20 years of work on human development, education, culture, disaster relief and the environment with a carefully balanced mix of tech skills, business savvy and understanding of social processes and sciences.

Stanford University Digital Vision Fellow, National University of Singapore Social Entrepreneur in Residence, Google Developing World Scholarship Awardee, Bill & Melinda Gates TEDGlobal Scholarship beneficiary and Reuters Foundation grant recipient. Featured by CNN as one of 20 Latin American Leaders on the Internet.

Founder of multiple initiatives and senior consultant for private, non-profit, government, academic and international organizations.

Skilled in developing institutional, national and regional assessment, strategies and policies with practical experience designing and executing field projects on citizen services, citizen reporting, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, open and collaborative knowledge, disaster response and recovery, as well as organizing conferences and hackathons in Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and USA.

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I have been fortunate to learn from people, communities and processes from remote Caribbean mountain villages to the depths of the Amazon Basin, from challenged settlements on the snowcapped summits of the Andes and underprivileged urban youth to thriving modern cities of Asia and Europe as well as prisons and disaster stricken developed and developing world populations.

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Active member of TEDx community since 2009.

Speaker at:

- TEDxTokyo 2011 (youtu.be/f0_cGEDA4Rk)

- TEDxSilkRoad, Istanbul (youtu.be/Pmd7TGjXG7k)

- TEDxUChicago (youtu.be/ytnCBpMJB_Q).

Curator of TEDxEarthquake9.0 (Japan), TEDxKRP (Singapore), TEDxPortauPrince (Haití) and TEDxSantoDomingo (Dominican Republic).

Bill and Melinda Gates TEDGlobal Scholarship Recipient.

Attended both the 2012 TEDxSummit Qatar and TEDGlobal.

Volunteer and team member at TEDxIHEParis, TEDxPantheonSorbonne, TEDxNUS and TEDxTohoku.

Why I’m on Couchsurfing

It's a great way to meet people and also an easy way to share our wealth, resources and luck, enabling opportunities for others. The roof is there, the couch is there. What better use for them to have someone benefit from them :-)

I grew up watching my father as an innate and casual couchsurfing host. He would meet interesting people at cultural and social events and invite them to stay at our place for days and weeks. We had South American painters, Cuban Internet experts who were amazed at real online Internet browsing, relatives of friends staying for extended periods, etc.

I love hosting people and would rather stay with locals and potential friends than at a hostel or hotel.

I first couchsurfed in Tokyo and it was a very positive experience. Then it was my turn to host a nice couple and it was most pleasant. So I was in :-)

Interests

Social Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Creativity, Education, Environment, Collaboration environments, Social Media, Peace.

• literature
• education
• environment
• boating
• communications
• ecology
• teaching
• entrepreneurship

Music, Movies, and Books

Moby, Loreena Mckennit, Deep Forest, Kitaro, Cirque du Soleil, Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Vangelis, Kitaro.

One Amazing Thing I’ve Done

Founder of a network of collaborative online spaces about education, literature and society with over 5 million active participants. Organizer of social events and conferences around the world. Biked from Santo Domingo to Port-au-Prince and from New York to Boston.

Teach, Learn, Share

Social Entrepreneurship, Social Business Models, Social Lean Startups, Social Innovation. Event organization, project management.

What I Can Share with Hosts

Social Entrepreneurship experience. Lean Startup Methodology applied to social innovation and impact. Innovation and Human Development. Love for Sci Fi novels and series :-)

Countries I’ve Visited

Argentina, Barbados, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominica, Germany, Grenada, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Italy, Japan, Mauritius, Mexico, Peru, Puerto Rico, Qatar, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Spain, Suriname, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States

Countries I’ve Lived In

Chile, Dominican Republic, France, Singapore, Trinidad and Tobago, United States