Who is SIX?

SIX Coordinator: Louise Pulford

Louise has coordinated SIX since the beginning of 2009. SIX is based at the Young Foundation, London, where Louise  has worked for 3 years, and was involved in the development of UpRising –a new leadership programme at the Young Foundation to support and train a new generation of public leaders.

Louise graduated from the University of Bristol with an MSc in East Asian Studies. As part of her MSc Louise worked for a British consultancy in Beijing. Louise is a keen Mandarin speaker and is a member of a leading Sino-British business organisation, the 48 group Club. She is involved in many community activities and she is a member of the the Spitalfields Music Festival Programme Advisory Group. Louise is also a member of the Advisory Board of One Young World

SIX Chair: Diogo Vasconcelos

Diogo has been Chair of SIX since Spring 2009. He brings great enthusiam and knowledge to SIX and provides invaluable support to the Secretariat. His passion is social innovation.

Diogo Vasconcelos was elected in May 2008, Chairman of APDC, a 25 years old public interest organization that represents the ICT industry in Portugal. One year later, was elected member of the Executive Board of Digital Europe.

He chaired the Business Panel on Future EU innovation policy, set up European Commission in January 2009, whose report (published in November 2009) called for a radical change European innovation policies.

Since February 2007, Diogo Vasconcelos has been a Distinguished Fellow with Cisco’s Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), the global strategy and innovation group of Cisco.  He is working on the role of ICT fighting climate change and promoting energy efficiency, and sustainable prosperity and the role of next generation broadband to foster innovation among other things. He is working with different governments in Europe and Middle East, with the European Commission and OECD.

He also chairs the new international NGO Dialogue Café, that will create a global network of cafes linked by high definition screens so that ordinary people from different cultures can meet, talk and create together.

Before joining Cisco, Diogo was the Knowledge Economic Advisor to the Portuguese President of Republic Prof Cavaco Silva and lead the President’s widely studied digital campaign and “digital presidency”.  
Diogo was founder and president of UMIC, the Portuguese Knowledge Society Agency. As President of UMIC, he created and leaded the implementation of the eGoverment Action Plan and National Broadband Initiative. He also represented Portugal in the European Council of Ministers and on the eEurope Advisory Group.
He was also a member of the board of the Innovation Agency. Before that, he was elected member of the Parliament and was Vice-President of Social Democratic Party and its spokesperson for Innovation. Prior to that, Diogo founded a multimedia company and published the first magazines in his country on both the internet and entrepreneurship and launched the Entrepreneurs Academy.
He has a Law degree and post-graduate degrees in Communications Law, Management and Political Science. In 2006, Diogo received from the former Portuguese President Mr Jorge Sampaio one of his country’s highest honors for his work, the “Commander of the Order of Prince Henrique the Navigator”.