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Mentors

	For the past 5 years Alex Barrera has been running startups and helping others develop their businesses. He co-founded two major startup accelerators, worked with business models, startup PR, lean startups methodologies and customer development. Through his most recent company, Press42, he has been working exhaustively with startups and their messages, giving storytelling workshops, pitching training and internationalization strategies, connecting them with the media, investors and market influencers globally.

	Pascal Finette is Director, Office of the Chair at Mozilla, where he works on building and growing the Mozilla movement. He loves to work at the intersection of technology and entrepreneurship and believes that the Internet is deeply impacting mankind. Prior to this role at Mozilla he lead Mozilla Labs and created Mozilla’s accelerator program WebFWD. Pascal is a TEDx speaker and frequently talks about Open Innovation and the power of networks when combined with technology, mentors entrepreneurs at The Unreasonable Institute, TechStars, Seedcamp and many other places. He founded the non-profit organization Mentor for Good to help social entrepreneurs change the world for the better and is the creator of the GyShiDo (Get Your S#%& Done) movement.

	Kasper Hulthin co-founded Podio, an online work platform with a new take on how everyday work gets done. It gives people more power than they’ve ever had before to do manage their work better, smarter and in their own way. He now serves as Head of User Engagement and Head of Business Development. He is passionate about building companies and changing the status quo.He believes in people and empowerment to change the world.

	Peter Kovacs is the Talent Scout at Prezi, one of today’s biggest Hungarian internet success stories. Prezi opens a new world between whiteboards and slides, providing an amazing tool for brainstorming, mind-mapping and presentations to let people share their ideas easier and in a funnier way. Peter has 6+ years of extensive HR / recruitment experience mainly in the IT & Telco industries, a proven track record in utilizing outside the box recruitment techniques and measurement of results and a deep knowledge in recruitment, employer branding and HR project management.

	Andreas Klinger is the Co-founder of LOOKK, a new way to discover and shop the best and newest fashion brands. He also co-founded Die Socialisten, a Social Software Development, Design & Consulting company. Andreas describe himself as a all-around little-to-no-bullshit product guy and his areas of expertise are metrics and marketing.

	Sandra Sick has worked with a very long list of start-ups in her career with a focus on marketing strategy development and execution. Having managed the marketing departments of a number of well-funded technology start-ups in the United States, she then leveraged this experience and founded her own marketing firm. Big Planet Marketing focuses on digital marketing strategies and getting clients in any industry found and then developing their brand. Sandra also has extensive experience working with non-profits, who share a lot of the same marketing challenges as traditional start-ups. She was the Digital Marketing Strategist for Stand Up To Cancer and part of the team that helped raise over $80 million for cancer research in the September 2010 telethon. She holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Business Administration with a focus in Marketing from S.U.N.Y. New Paltz in New York. Having relocated to Lisbon, Portugal from Los Angeles, CA in August 2011, Sandra continues to run her marketing business while being activity involved with start-ups; consulting, advising and mentoring.

	David Bizer is HackFwds Chief Talent Geek. David is a pioneer in global internet recruiting with a unique bi-continental background discovering talent from Silicon Valley to the technology hubs of Europe. Over the past 15 years, David has recruited and led recruitment efforts resulting in the hiring of more than 4000 top-caliber candidates across more than 25 countries. David started his career in staffing at Netscape which was at the time, perhaps the most exciting internet company on the planet. Having learned with the best at Netscape, David then joined Trilogy to lead their European Recruitment efforts, sourcing high caliber Computer Science graduates from top universities in Western Europe. In 2003, David was named the first European recruiter at Google. He hired over 300 candidates in his first 18 months. He then led Googles staffing efforts across Europe for 20+ sales offices and all technical graduate recruitment. David holds a bachelors degree in International Business from the University of Colorado, Boulder and has served as President of AIESEC United States.

	Luis is the VP of International Operations at SurveyMonkey, the world leader on online surveys, since January 2010. He is responsible for the international operations of the company, including customer support, billing and business development. Previously he was at Portugal Telecom, where he spent 7 years in a number of managerial roles, on ecommerce operations (General Manager of tradecom.pt and COO of pmelink.pt). Before PT, Luis was a Manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting. He has spent much of his career internationally, having worked in the U.S., Germany, Brazil, Spain and the Netherlands. Luis holds a BA in Management and a post-graduate degree in Multimedia and Communications Management from the Technical University of Lisbon.

Startup Exchange Program mentors are crème de la crème professionals from all around the world.