Nearshore Americas

Sergio Paulo Gallindo to Take Over as CEO of Brasscom

A former executive of British Telecom (BT), Sergio Paulo Gallindo has been named CEO of Brazil’s IT lobby group Brasscom. Gallindo succeeds Antonio Carlos Rego Gil, who will take up the position of guest adviser in the association.

Brasscom is made up of top domestic and foreign ITC companies operating in Brazil such as IBM, Microsoft, Intel, Ericcson and Lenovo.

“The members of the association expect to drive synergies for the growth and strengthening of a segment marked by dynamic, fast transformations,” Paulo said.

“Sergio Paulo’s mission is to take Brasscom to new levels,” the IT association stated in a press release. Brasscom has successfully persuaded President Dilma Rousseff’s government to set aside $2 billion USD for funding ICT education of Brazilian students in top foreign universities.

Brasscom, according to a statement, will intensify its attempts to foster innovation and competitiveness among domestic IT firms, and promote the use of cloud services. Special attention will also be given to startups and small and medium-sized businesses with high potential for innovation.

A lawyer and a computer science graduate from the University of Texas,  Paulo was working as the General Director of BT in Brazil until a month ago. He represented BT Brazil at Brasscom since 2009, and was elected member of the board in 2012. Before joining BT, he was the vice president of Nortel in Brazil and executive director for Corporate Business at GVT.

The reshuffle at Brasscom comes at a time when Latin America’s biggest economy is investing billions of dollars on infrastructure development in preparation for staging the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Summer Olympics. The sporting events are expected to generate an investment of about $57 billion, of which 10% will be devoted to IT.

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Brazil’s information technology (IT) and communications industry has over two million professionals but will need an additional 900,000 to realize its goal of becoming the world’s third largest ITC market by 2022.

Narayan Ammachchi

News Editor for Nearshore Americas, Narayan Ammachchi is a career journalist with a decade of experience in politics and international business. He works out of his base in the Indian Silicon City of Bangalore.

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