Rodrigo Baggio
Founder and Executive Director of Centre for Digital Inclusion
Rodrigo Baggio is the founder and president of the CDI (Center for Digital Inclusion), a global NGO headquartered in Brazil that seeks to empower people to fight poverty, stimulate entrepreneurship and create change makers through the use of information and communication technology. CDI, pioneer in digital inclusion in Latin America, supports 842 CDI Community Centers in 15 countries in Latin America and Europe, and in 20 years it has impacted more than 1,64 million people. Currently, Baggio lives in San Francisco, United States, where he leads new projects for the development of the field of social entrepreneurship and technology, in partnership with global organizations such as Ashoka, where he had previously worked as Senior VP.
Winner of the Entrepreneur for the World Award in 2014 (World Entrepreneurship Forum) Rodrigo Baggio also has won more than 60 awards from organizations such as UNICEF, UNESCO, Time, Fortune, CNN and the World Economic Forum. Baggio has been named one of the hundred “Young Global Leaders” (World Economic Forum), considered one of the 50 Latin American leaders who will make a difference in the third millennium (Time Magazine) and one of the 10 personalities in the world chosen as “Principal Voices” in the economic development field (CNN, Time and Fortune) along with the Nobel Prize Muhammad Yunus and the professor and economist Jeffrey Sachs.
Before CDI, Rodrigo Baggio worked as Artificial Intelligence Specialist for Accenture and managed IBM’s “Reinventing Education” programs. He envisioned the use of computers to promote social inclusion and launched initiatives such as the first computer donation campaign in Brazil. In 1995, he founded the first Information Technology and Citizens Rights schools in one of Rio de Janeiro’s slums. He holds the honorary title of Doctor in Humane Letters from the School of Computer Science of DePaul University.
About CDI:
CDI is a social organization focused on digital empowerment which seeks to qualify the young so they can become autonomous, aware, and connected, able to reprogram the system in which they live, through the use of technology. With 842 spaces of digital training, CDI Network is present in 15 countries and 16 Brazilian states, and has impacted more than de 1.64 million of lives until today. This global network is coordinated and monitored by 24 regional and international offices, including the most remote places in Brazil and Latin America.