Rodrigo Afonso

Rodrigo Afonso, known as Kiko, is a entrepreneur and advocate on the startup and innovation ecosystem in Brasil. Started his professional life at IBASE’s AlterNex, first internet service provider in latin america focused on the civil society. Son of Carlos Afonso, IBASE’s founder and one of Brazilian’s internet pioneers, worked with technology and innovation since early stages of his professional career, being one of Brazil’s first webmasters.

Worked at RITS, a brazilian NGO, where he lead the technology team on the implementation of a digital inclusion projects, attending dozens of thousands of low income citizens in the whole country, with more than 1500 community telecenters, running open software.

Worked on the private sector at Qx3, a digital innovation company, as IT/Operational director where he lead a team of over 70 professionals on innovative projects for big companies like Itaú, Rede Globo, B2W, BrMalls, TIM, among others.

Today he is CEO at the NGO Ação da Cidadania, on of the largest and well known NGO’s in the country focused on fighting Hunger, having fed almost 20 million people in the country during it's existence, in partnership with major institutions such as FAO/Onu, WFP/Onu, Facebook, iFood, Ford Foundation and others.

He is also CEO of the Startup Advocacy group called Dínamo, focused on public policies for the startup ecosystem in Brazil, that advocates with federal, state and municipal governments, supporting and proposing policy changes to help entrepreneurs develop solutions and enhance the local economy. Dínamo is a huge alliance between private and third sector groups, such as Google, Facebook, Startup Farm, ABVCap, ABStartups and others, proposing and advocating common agenda’s and trying to develop policies for the brazilian startup ecosystem.