ECKM Biographies

Below are the ECKM Biographies of the Conference and Programme Chairs, Key Note Speakers and Mini-Track Chairs.

Conference and Programme Chairs


Florinda Matos is a Professor at ISCTE - University Institute of Lisbon. She is the founder and president of the Intellectual Capital Association (ICAA), whose mission is to help transform intellectual capital into added value by contributing to Sustainable Development. She is also a member of the New Club of Paris, an international organisation whose main objective is to create awareness about the Knowledge Economy. As a Knowledge Management and Intellectual Capital expert, she works with several international organisations to promote the management of the intangibles as accelerators of Innovation, Competitiveness and Sustainability in the Digital

Prof Álvaro Rosa is associate professor (with Habilitation) at ISCTE Business School.  Currently is the director of the Master of International Management at Iscte - Instituto UniversitĂĄrio de Lisboa and member of Scientific Committee of Iscte Doctoral Programme on Applied Management.  His research interests are strategy, qaulity and cross-cultural management.  He is a regular visiting scholar in faculties in China, Brazil, UK, and Slovenia.

Key Note Speakers

Leif Edvinsson is a key pioneering contributor to the theory and practice of Intellectual Capital (IC). He is the world’s first Director of IC in 1991. He was prototyping in 1996 the Skandia Future Center as Lab for Organisational design. In 1998, he was awarded by Brain Trust “Brain of the Year” award, UK; listed in Who’s Who in the world; earlier associate member of the Club of Rome; and Co-founder and Founding Chairman of the New Club of Paris. In 2013, he was awarded the Thought Leader Award by the European Commission, Intel and Peter Drucker Association. In 2015, he was appointed Advisory Board to JIN—the Japan Innovation Network. He was appointed in 2016 to the Advisory Board of Norway Open Innovation Forum. Together with the UN he was awarded the KM Award 2017, in Geneva Palais des Nations, by km-a.net.

Dr. Jay Liebowitz is the Executive-in-Residence for Public Service at Columbia University’s Data Science Institute.  He was previously a Visiting Professor in the Stillman School of Business and the MS-Business Analytics Capstone & Co-Program Director (External Relations) at Seton Hall University. He was ranked one of the top 10 knowledge management researchers/practitioners out of 11,000 worldwide, and was ranked #2 in KM Strategy worldwide according to the January 2010 Journal of Knowledge Management.  At Johns Hopkins University, he was the founding Program Director for the Graduate Certificate in Competitive Intelligence and the Capstone Director of the MS-Information and Telecommunications Systems for Business Program, where he engaged over 30 organizations in industry, government, and not-for-profits in capstone projects. Prior to joining Hopkins, Dr. Liebowitz was the first Knowledge Management Officer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.  Dr. Liebowitz is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of Expert Systems With Applications: An International Journal (published by Elsevier; ranked as a top-tier journal; Thomson Impact Factor from June 2021 is 8.665).  He is a Fulbright Scholar, IEEE-USA Federal Communications Commission Executive Fellow, and Computer Educator of the Year (International Association for Computer Information Systems).  He has published over 45 books and a myriad of journal articles on knowledge management, analytics, financial literacy, intelligent systems, and IT management. He has lectured and consulted worldwide.   

Mini Track Chairs

D.Sc. Sladjana Cabrilo is a Professor at I-Shou University in Taiwan. She holds a PhD degree in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia. Sladjana’s research focuses on intellectual capital, knowledge management, innovation, business performance, and digital transformation. Her experience includes participation in scientific and industry-related projects, publishing more than 80 academic articles & serving on editorial boards.

Francisca Castilla-Polo (PhD): Lecturer specialized in Reputation, Corporate Social Responsibility and Non-Financial Indicators. She is an Associate Professor within the Financial Economy and Accounting Department at the University of Jaén (Spain). Her research interests are focused on the measurement and disclosure of non-compulsory accounting information and its effects on corporate reputation together with other intangible assets such as human capital, social capital and relational capital. She has published in first position top-journals indexed within Web of Knowledge Science (WOS) and she has taken part in numerous research projects related to her areas of interest.

Andrew Herd is a knowledge management and lessons learned senior expert and practitioner. He has worked at the European Space Agency for 20 years and for the last 7 years been dedicated to the area of knowledge management at ESA including being the lead for corporate lessons learned since its conception at the Agency. Andrew has been part of internal activities for KM as well as knowledge sharing on KM and LL processes outside of the Agency: with industry, academia and also other non-profit organisations. Whilst working as a thought leader in this area, he is actively open to new ideas and adopting or adapting these within the specific organisational context of the Agency.

Prof Ali Hessami was the Chair and Technical Editor of IEEE’s first global standard “Model Process for addressing Ethical Concerns in System Design”, referred to as P7000.  This generic process standard that’s been published as IEEE 7000 in September 2021 is aimed at identification, evaluation and protection of ethical human values in products, services and systems. Ali is also VC of IEEE Ethics Certification Programme for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (ECPAIS)

D.Sc. Aino Kianto is a Full Professor in Knowledge Management at the LUT School of Business and Management, LUT University, Finland. Her research focuses on knowledge management, intellectual capital, creativity, innovation and organizational renewal. Prof. Kianto has delivered keynote speeches and acted as a track chair in many international conferences and serves in the editorial board of five academic journals. 

Anna Maria Melina is a research fellow at University of Catanzaro.  She is adjunct professor in Organizational Theory and Organizational Behavior. Her research focuses on Knowledge Management, Family Business, Small & Medium Business, Generational Change and Healthcare System. She is a speaker in national and international conferences. She is the author and/or co-author of several publications, including books, articles, research reports and working papers.

Paulo Gonçalves Pinheiro is a Professor of Beira Interior University (UBI), Business & Economics Department, and a researcher at the NECE, Research Center in Business Sciences (UBI). His teaching activities are mainly on knowledge management and comprehend undergraduate, master, and doctoral students. He is a Ph.D. in management and author of several publications. His main research areas are information management, organizational spirituality, organizational practical wisdom, and knowledge management. https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2397-6463

Raquel Puentes Poyatos is a Professor of Organization theory and Human Resource Management at the University of  Jaen (Spain), where she received her Ph.D. Currently, her research is focused on the fields of HRM, Corporate Social Responsibility and knowledge management. She publications appeared in academic journals.

Raysa Rocha teaches at the University of Beira Interior (UBI). She is project manager in the ENTRANCE, RE-START and ENTER_EdTech projects (Erasmus+). Raysa received her PhD with distinction from UBI. She is part of international networks, i.e., Academy of Management - AOM, International Association for Knowledge Management, and the Social Responsibility Research Network. During her PhD, Raysa received international awards for her thesis project, including the MSR 2021 Promising Dissertation Award given by the MSR-AOM. She is interested in studying organizational practices that lead to a humanized strategy. Raysa's has published in journals of great distinction, i.e., Journal of Business Ethics and the Social Responsibility Journal. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6542-1397

M. Isabel SĂĄnchez-HernĂĄndez (PhD): Lecturer specialized in Corporate Social Responsibility, Human Resources and Sustainable Entrepreneurship for Regional Development. Professor within the Business Management and Sociology Department at the University of Extremadura (Spain). Her research interests range across several key areas within the Business Organization and Sustainability Management.

Assoc. Prof. Dr hab. Eng. Sebastian Saniuk is employed as a professor at the University of Zielona GĂłra (Poland). Since 2015 he is a member of the Committee of Production Engineering of the Polish Academy of Sciences. His research interests include issues related to production management, industrial engineering and logistics, employees' knowledge and skills, sustainable development, corporate social responsibility, particularly planning and control of production flow and modelling of production networks of SME’s, rapid prototyping, CSR in SME's. The results of his research have been presented in over 270 national and international scientific publications including journals, monographs and conference proceedings of national and international conferences indexed in Web of Science and Scopus database (in countries including: China, Turkey, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Croatia and Germany).  During his career, he has conducted research under several grants awarded and funded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, The National Centre for Research and Development and the European Union. H-index=14 (WoS), h-Index=15 (Scopus).

Dr. Changiz Valmohammadi is Associate Professor at, Islamic Azad University, South Tehran Branch. His areas of interest are quality management, knowledge management, operations management, strategic management, and application of IT in business operations. For more than 25 years he has taught and supervised undergraduate, graduate students at both national and international universities, such as Taylor’s university and Universidad de las AmĂ©ricas Puebla (UDLAP) and offered consulting services to the Iranian public and private organizations. He has published research papers in journals such as Information & Management, International Journal of Production Economics, The TQM Journal, International Journal of Productivity and
Performance, Resources Policy, Total Quality Management & Business Excellence and Journal of Enterprise Information Management. He sits on editorial board of Journals such as Management Decision, Industrial and Commercial Training, JUST to name a few.

Marzia Ventura, Ph.D., is a researcher and Professor at Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro and she is member of Research Center “Economics and Management of Services”. The main topic of research is on human resource management, intellectual capital, corporate social responsibility, knowledge sharing in organizations.

Walter Vesperi is Ph.D. in Management and Economics in University of Messina actually is Research and Professor at Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro. His research in  terests are knowledge management that influence organizational development and change in dynamically evolving environments. His publications appeared in academic journals and he attended at several international conferences.

Yong Wang is Professor in Family Business & Entrepreneurship at Wolverhampton Business School and Fellow of the International Family Enterprise Research Academy (IFERA). Prof. Wang’s research focus on family business and entrepreneurship. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Strategic Information System, Journal of Family Business Strategy, International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behaviour and Research, as well as others.

Knowledge Cafe Facilitator