Alex Paiva
Positivo Tecnologica Educacional

Chris Rosenbaum
Knewton
Chris Rosenbaum has spent the last ten years in the education industry. He started during college as a Kaplan GMAT, LSAT, and SAT master teacher, then spent 5 years as a Director in South Jersey and the DC region. He joined Knewton as part of the founding team in early 2008, as has held various roles — Director of Development, Director of Test Prep, Director of Customer Outreach, and finally now Director of Sales Operations and Academic Programs.

Paulo Blikstein
Director Transformative Technologies Lab, Learning Fabrication Lab, Stanford University (graduate of MIT Media Lab)
Paulo Blikstein is an assistant professor at Stanford University’s School of Education and (by courtesy) Computer Science Department. Blikstein’s research focuses on the confluence of expressive technologies for learning and critical pedagogy. He adapts cutting-edge technologies for use in inner-city schools, such as computer modeling, robotics, and rapid prototyping, creating constructionist learning environments in which children learn science and mathematics by building sophisticated projects and devices. His research interests also include the applications of complexity sciences in education and computational literacy, particularly the new knowledge representation infrastructures emerging from the use of computational representations.
Blikstein has worked extensively with inner city middle-school students in developing countries, such as Brazil, Mexico, Senegal, and Costa Rica, and has recently worked with undergraduate and high-schools students in the US. He completed his PhD. at the Center for Connected Learning and Computer-Based Modeling at Northwestern University, and holds a B.S. in Metallurgical Engineering and a MSc. in Digital Systems Engineering from the University of São Paulo, Brazil (1998, 2001), and a MSc. degree from the MIT Media Lab (2002), where he was also a visiting scholar (2003).
Outside of academia, Paulo studied Film and directed scientific documentaries. Paulo has published several book chapters and papers about his work in education (most available at www.blikstein.com/paulo).

Gilberto Dimenstein
Journalist and Fellow, Advanced Leadership Initiative, Harvard University
Gilberto Dimenstein is a Fellow of the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard, where he works in partnership with researchers at the Media Lab on an Internet program to help cities transform themselves into learning communities (www.catracalivre.com.br).
For his reporting on social issues and his experiences with educational projects, Gilberto Dimenstein was named by Época magazine in 2007 as one of the hundred most influential figures in the country. He won the National Award for Human Rights along with D. Paulo Evaristo Arns, the Criança e Paz Award from UNICEF, and Honorable Mention for the Maria Moors Cabot Award from Columbia University School of Journalism in New York. He also won the Esso prize (main category) and Jabuti prize for best non-fiction book.
Dimenstein was one of the creators of Andi (News Agency for Children’s Rights), which is circulated in Brazil and several countries in Latin America. In 2009, a document prepared at Harvard Business School, named him as an example of community innovation for his neighborhood-school project initially developed in São Paulo and replicated across the country. The text was sent to U.S. president Barack Obama.
Senator Cristovam Buarque, who created the Bolsa Escola when he was governor of Distrito Federal, revealed in a book titled The Strength of an Idea by Charles Herique Araujo and Marcelo Aguiar that Dimenstein was one of the inspirations for this program. On page 25, Cristovam says: “Dimenstein not only helped refine the idea, but, above all, was the first person to alert me of its importance. It was from him that I heard the phrase, ‘grab this idea and leave the others aside’ when years later I was running for governor.” The Bolsa Escola was one of the bases for founding the Bolsa Familia, which today serves 11 million families.