Miguel Valença Pires, MBA

Is a Vice-President in the Investment Banking Division of Deutsche Bank in New York City, which he joined in 2011 and where he advises insurance companies on capital raising, mergers & acquisitions and corporate finance. Prior to that, Miguel was an Associate in the Financial Institutions Group of UBS in NYC. Miguel graduated with a Masters in Business Administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Prior to business school, Miguel worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Co., in Lisbon, Portugal. Miguel has a degree in Aerospace Engineering from Instituto Superior Técnico. Miguel was a member of the Executive Committee of PAPS during 2010-2011.

Pedro Henriques da Silva, DMA

Is a composer, multi-instrumentalist, professor, and lecturer in various fields of music and other arts and sciences. Pedro is Faculty at New York University, on Composition and Classical Guitar. He has given master classes and lectures internationally at museums, universities, and palaces, on a variety of topics – ranging from music and physics, art, and music technology – and courses at the MoMA (NYC) since 2011. Pedro’s compositions and performances have taken him to over a dozen countries across four continents. He has performed at some of the most recognizable concert halls in the world including: Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center in New York, Kennedy Center, Louvre Museum and Palace of Versailles in France, Monserrate Palace and Centro Cultural de Belém in Portugal, and Kew Royal Palace in London. Pedro is the Music Director and Co-Founder of Manhattan Camerata, a multi-cultural chamber orchestra. He avidly performs the Portuguese guitar in virtually all his concerts promoting the instrument outside of Portugal.

Ricardo Alexandre, MSc

Visiting Scholar at Columbia University is a professional journalist at RTP, Public Radio and Television in Portugal, where he hosts a World Affairs radio program, Visão Global. As of June 2015 he will be initiating new functions as RTP TV and Radio Foreign Affairs Editor. Ricardo was deputy news director, anchor of radio morning shows and reported from war and conflict zones: Ukraine (January 2014), Balkans since the 90’s (where he interviewed some of the top political leaders), Afghanistan, Palestine, East Timor. He was awarded two radio national prizes and assignments took him also to Lybia, Iran, Brazil, Cyprus, Cuba, Turkey, Northern Ireland, USA. Ricardo published five books (on Yugoslavia, Palestine, Iran; co-authored a world affairs’ book and wrote a musician’s biography) and several articles in main national newspapers as well as El Mundo (Spain) and NIN (Serbia). Ricardo is a doctoral student in Political Science and International Relations at ISCTE, Lisbon University Institute, and a Visiting Researcher at CEI, Centro de Estudos Internacionais. He has a degree in Sociology from University of Porto and a Masters in European Policies from ISCTE.  Ricardo was a Fellow of the German Marshall Fund of United States in 2007, institution with which he continues to collaborate. He is member of Mediane, the EU-Council of Europe program for Diversity and Inclusiveness in media. Ricardo is also a Journalism teacher in public and private universities since 2001 – he did journalism training for local professionals in Portugal, East Timor, Cape Vert, Mozambique and Macao.