OUR TEAM

The Portugal Social Innovation Mission Unit comprises a multidisciplinary and experienced team that is committed to our mission of promoting social innovation and stimulating the emerging social investment market in Portugal.

Organisation is arranged into three teams:

Presidente

Comissão de Aconselhamento

Adjunto

Secretário Técnico

Management Support Team

This teams provides direct support to the President in matters related to administrative, asset and human resources management, as well as communication and strategic support.

Technical Financing Team

This team monitors the implementation of the four financing instruments Portugal Inovação Social manages, in particular by collaborating in the preparation of support documentation to operate the instruments, clarify doubts regarding said operation, assessing applications and monitoring the implementation of approved projects.

Technical Activation Team

This team is in charge of stimulating social innovation and social entrepreneurship at a regional level, by promoting the Portugal Inovação Social initiative and its respective financing instruments, mobilizing public and private entities to collaborate with social innovation projects, clarifying doubts and encouraging a network of knowledge and experience sharing to stimulate the development and sustainability of social innovation and social entrepreneurship in the territories it covers.

Filipe Almeida

Filipe Almeida

President

Born in Coimbra, he has lived in several cities across the country, studied in the United States and took his PhD in Rio de Janeiro. He is an academic and has been a lecturer at the University of Coimbra’s Faculty of Economics since 1996. He holds a degree in Business Management and a PhD in Business Administration, and fancies moral philosophy and other ways of looking at things and of thinking. He is also a researcher at the Centre of Social Studies and the Centre of Cooperative and Social Economy Studies, and lectures on Financial Accounting, Human Resources Management, Organisational Behaviour, Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility. A humanist with a metaphysical calling and musician, he teaches to learn, likes to smile, prefers the countryside and mountains, retreats in poetry and, if he could, would sow all of life’s precious moments.

Mário Dias

Mário Dias

Technical Secretary (coordinates the Technical Financing Team)

Born and living in Coimbra, he holds a degree in Business Organisation and Management from the University of Coimbra’s Faculty of Economics. He has monitored European Structural and Investment Funds, on behalf of the financing body, since 2001, and has been with Portugal Inovação Social since 2015. He has been an Académica de Coimbra football fan since forever, plays basketball and other sports that don’t benefit from his height. He loves music and is curious, direct, enigmatic and has a wonderful sense of humour.

Carla Rocha

Carla Rocha

Equipa Técnica de Financiamento

With a degree in Economics from the University of Coimbra’s Faculty of Economics, she has had a varied professional career, closely linked to Social Economy. A micro-entrepreneur, mother of six and of Angolan descent, she is also part Lisbonite and loves Coimbra. She restores furniture and smiles, and is a firm believer in the notion that change in the world lies in the hands of a small group of thoughtful and committed citizens, just as anthropologist Margaret Mead so eloquently stated.

Marco Costa

Marco Costa

Equipa Técnica de Financiamento

Born and raised in Penacova, near the Mondego River, he holds a degree in Business Organisation and Management from the University of Coimbra’s Faculty of Economics. His time at university was an important period in his life, not only academically, where he found his calling for financial management and information systems, but also socially, where he made friends for life. He has always been involved with EU Funds, whether working with promoting bodies or with financing institutions. He joined Portugal Inovação Social in 2015, on a project that he believes is “disruptive and motivating”, with a team he identifies with immensely. He loves technology, nature, cinema, Sporting football club and hanging out with friends or family. He was put to the test as a teenager, which shaped who he is and his outlook on life: steadfast optimist and firm believer that we should live in the now, one day at a time. He believes smiling is contagious and loves what he does, but his family comes first.

Alexandra Neves

Alexandra Neves

Equipa Técnica de Ativação (Região Centro)

Born and raised in Trás-os-Montes, in the north of Portugal, she wanted to be a journalist or a psychologist so that she could work in war or disaster zones because she was fascinated by the images she saw on TV at home. She holds a degree in Human Resources Management and Gerontology and looks after those in need. She is a choir conductor, missionary, devoted advocate for justice and love, and easy going. Fate brought her to Portugal Inovação Social, where today she can be part journalist, part psychologist and part manager, but in other wars: discovering, encouraging and monitoring projects with the power to change communities and the world.

Francisco Fragoso

Francisco Fragoso

Equipa de Técnica de Ativação (Regiões do Alentejo e Algarve)

A father, born in the Alentejo region and Benfica fan, he likes Sociology because it simplifies understanding. For twenty years, he designed and managed projects, created, helped create and managed companies, ran NGOs and sat on the Board of other organisations involved in development. He consultants, has published several books and believes in social innovation and in sustainable development. He takes photographs because he doesn’t know how to paint. He takes photographs because he doesn’t know how to write poetry. He takes photographs because he believes that nature is the best poetry on canvas. He likes red, white and sparkling wine, which he prefers to have in good company rather than with food. Along the way he thought that he wanted to change the world, until he realised that it was he who had to change. The world knows best. Make no mistake about it.

Marta Albuquerque

Marta Albuquerque

Deputy

Born in Mangualde and a mother, she holds a degree in Economics from Nova University, Lisbon. She has a natural talent to crunch numbers and hear words, take on red tape, regulations, plans, mistakes and people with the patience of someone who knows that everything is easier than it seems. She prefers to appreciate than to spend. After 15 years of planning, managing and controlling the budget for Infraestruturas de Portugal, she decided to ride the Portugal Inovação Social train to help change the world.

João Machado

João Machado

Technical Financing Team (monitors the Social Innovation Fund)

Raised in Cartaxo, which he visits whenever he can, and having studied Management in Lisbon and Macau, sustainability and entrepreneurship have always been a part of his journey. He has worked with three consulting companies, collaborated in the drafting of several sustainability reports for multinationals and has prepared dozens of business plans for startups. He believes that economic models should serve society, and not the other way around. A principled karate kid, music and singing are his passion. Driven by the task of helping to implement the Social Innovation Fund, he does so to the sound of Wilco.

Luísa Bernardes

Luísa Bernardes

Equipa Técnica de Financiamento

Woman, mother and figueirense through and through, she is heavily influenced by Figueira da Foz, a city open to the world which led her to pursue International Relations. Part of international networks and projects for the past two decades, she has had the opportunity to travel and meet people from different cultures and with different traditions. She loves technology, innovation, strategy and communication, and believes that “purpose” is the currency for change. Steadfast optimist, she encourages and feeds off the belief that the world can be changed. And believes that it changes every day.

Marisa Malva

Marisa Malva

Equipa Técnica de Financiamento

Born in Coimbra, where you can get lost and be found, she has wanted to be involved in public service since she was a little girl and, perhaps, this is what led her to take a degree in Public Administration. She likes the simple things in life, and freedom, and strolls through history and the streets that made it. She collects succulent plants and plants herbs. Torn between Académica de Coimbra and Sporting football clubs, she cooks and sprinkles the other parts of her life with the certainty that there will always be light on the other side of darkness. She joined Portugal Inovação Social because “dreams are what push us forward”.

Helena Loureiro

Helena Loureiro

Equipa Técnica de Ativação – Região Norte

With a degree in Psychology, she began her career as senior clerk at the Gondomar City Council, has chaired the Gondomar Child and Youth Protection Committee and was Head of the Gondomar Social Welfare and Healthcare Department. She was founding partner and Chair of the Board of association Gondomar Social – Associação de Intervenção Comunitária, which oversees the first Specialised Foster Home, “Gondomar Coração d’Ouro”. A proud native of Porto, she loves listening to and feeling music, cooking just for a few or for many, skating on solid ground or in impossible dreams, chatting for the sake of it, meeting new people, experiencing new cultures and continuously learning. Growing with her kids is her passion and blue and white, the colours of Porto football club, course through her veins.

Expressions of Interest and Spontaneous Applications

Send us your CV by email to secretariado@inovacaosocial.portugal2020.pt, telling us the profile you are interested in, as well as your current role/position and employment situation.

Expressions of interest and spontaneous applications from civil servants will be given priority.