Portugal

Born in Lisbon in 1969, João Simão Pires completed a degree in Economics from the Portuguese Catholic University in 1992. He received his MBA with a specialization in Finance and Strategy from the William E. Simon Graduate School of Business Administration (University of Rochester, USA), in 1997.
He began teaching at the Portuguese Catholic University in 1992 and has been an assistant at this university since 2004, in the Management Degree. He began his professional activity in 1992 at Banco de Portugal, integrated in the Economic Research Nucleus of the Directorate of Economic Studies.
As a consultant based in the London office of the strategy consulting firm The Monitor Company (Cambridge, USA), between 1993 and 1999, he participated and led projects in the UK, USA, Germany, Spain and Greece. Among the client sectors for which he has worked are: beer, aluminium, pay-tv, retail banking, wines and spirits, forest management, wood industries and telecommunications. He was Manager in the Lisbon office of the management consulting firm Arthur D. Little (Cambridge, USA), focusing on the areas of utilities and telecommunications.
For three years, he assumed responsibilities as Director of Planning and Management Control at EPAL – Portuguese Company of Water, SA. He was a member of the Executive Committee of Sonae Novobord, the South African subsidiary of Sonae Industry, based in Johannesburg. He was a Partner at Bright Partners – Management, Technology and Capital, SA.
He was a member of the Board of Directors of ERSAR – Water and Waste Services Regulatory Authority between 2006 and 2010, with responsibility for the economic regulation of the managing entities and development of legislative and regulatory projects. As a consultant, he subsequently provided specialized support to public and private organizations in the field of regulation of public water and waste services, both in Portugal and internationally.
Since 2012, he has been the Executive Director of the Portuguese Water Partnership, an association that aims to promote the growing internationalization of the Portuguese Water cluster, bringing together more than 100 companies, research centers, professional associations and agencies of the national public administration. He is a member of the Advisory Board of ERSAR as an independent expert and assumed in 2017 functions as President of CAGER – Waste Management Monitoring Commission, an entity of technical support to the Government in the formulation, monitoring and evaluation of waste management policies.

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