Team

Central Team

Claudia Rocha

Claúdia Rocha​

Claúdia Rocha is the Engagement Leader of the Assistance Mechanism for the Atlantic Action Plan. Cláudia joined PwC in 1996 and she is currently the Strategy Advisory leader in PwC Portugal, Angola and Cape Verde. With more than 24 years of professional experience, she has been working for several years with private and public organisations, assisting them in the execution of major investment projects, in Portugal, Angola and Cape Verde. She has been responsible for the coordination of multidisciplinary teams in projects related to the elaboration of strategic plan, business plans, companies and businesses valuations, financial structuring of capital projects, model reviews, economic and financial feasibility studies, analysis of strategic options including financial restructurings, identification of investors, fundraising and identification of strategic partners in the development of new projects, market analysis, economic impact analyses and other specialised interventions. Cláudia is a member of PwC Blue Economy Centre of Excellence PwC Portugal and has a wide client base in the Maritime industries sector, including: Leixões Cruise Terminals, Port Authority of the Setúbal and Sesimbra region, Urban Wind, Windplus, REN, among other entities at national, regional and local levels. Under the scope of the public sector Cláudia worked with Cape Verde Ministry of Finance, Portugal Ministry of Economy, eSPap (Portuguese Public Administration Shared Services Center Entity), AEP (Portuguese Business Association), AIP (Portuguese Industrial Association), FLAD (Portuguese-American Foundation for Development Aid), Cape Verde Government, IFD (Portuguese Financial Development Institution), etc. She has a close relationship with several intergovernmental institutions, such as World Bank, African Development Bank, IMF, European Investment Bank, European Commission, since she has been involved in the intermediation between her clients and these organisations, in specific projects.


Pedro Guerreiro​

Pedro Guerreiro​

Pedro is the Support Leader of the Assistance Mechanism for the Atlantic Strategy. He is a Director of Strategy Advisory department, at the PwC Portugal. He is also the responsible of PwC Blue Economy Centre of Excellence PwC Portugal. Pedro has an undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering and Management; Master’s in science in Industrial Engineering and Management; Prince2 Practitioner Certification; and, INSEAD Strategy Execution Programme. Pedro has more than 8 years of professional experience in finance, investment and assessing of financial viability of companies/projects plus market and sectoral analysis, PMO and analytics. In his career as a consultant to European Institutions, he has worked in projects related to intellectual property, innovation, entrepreneurship, support to growth SMEs and member state convergence. Pedro is part of the team of the Blueinvest project and is responsible for the Digital Blue Economy Platform Development, project in partnership with Forum Oceano that intends to provide an integrated quantitative analysis of the overall Blue Economy trends and for each sector, in a sustainable and inclusive approach, by presenting relevant performance indicators of a geography and its positioning, in a visual and dynamic format.


Mariana Taylor Jesus

Mariana Taylor Jesus

Mariana is the Sea Basin Coordinator for the Atlantic and is a Strategy Advisory Manager at PwC Portugal. Mariana has more than 7 years relevant experience. Her relevant certifications are Undergraduate Degree in Business Administration; Master of Science in Business Administration, Major in Innovation and Technology. Mariana has a strong knowledge in strategy planning projects, as well as preparing and presenting training sessions, developing benchmark studies, supporting strategy implementation as PMO and designing efficient and effective processes in different industries. Mariana is native in Portuguese, fluent in English and Spanish both spoken and written. Mariana has been involved in the previous Atlantic Assistance Mechanism as Project Manager for the Central Team.


Ana Gonçalves

Ana Gonçalves

Ana Gonçalves is a Senior Consultant at PwC Portugal, being the Central Point of Contact for the Atlantic Assistance Mechanism. Ana is a master graduate with a technological academic background and successful experiences in top multinational companies in the private sector, in the fields of information technologies and consultancy. She is an experienced senior strategy and finance consultant with solid experience in project management, consulting, strategy, operations and innovation.


Elina Zempili

Elina Zempili 

Elina Zempili is the Monitoring Expert of the Assistance Mechanism for the Atlantic Action Plan.  Elina has over 20 years of experience in managing complex EU-funded technical assistance projects and in managing multi-national teams of experts.  Elina is a leader in the international project area, specialised on the monitoring and evaluation of development projects, and has been responsible for the identification and supervision of international and local experts for the implementation of several EU development assistance projects.She has worked extensively in several EU projects, where she has managed large multi-dimensional teams comprised of experts in the various fields of communications, public relations, community buliding, monitoring, innovation, SMEs etc.  and reported successfully to the Contracting Authorities.  She has been actively involved  in the Assistance Mechanism for the Atlantic Action Plan, holding the position of team leader since 2016.  Elina holds an MA in European Politics from Vrije Universiteit Brussels. She speaks English and Greek fluently and has a basic understanding of French.  

National Hubs

National Hub France

Frédérick Herpers

Frédérick​ Herpers

Frédérick Herpers is an engineer in hydrography and oceanography (ENSTA Bretagne). He has 13 years of experience in geophysics sciences (hydrography, oceanography, geography) for civilian and military purposes (for the Defence ministry. He has more than 10 years of experience in design and implementation of integrated maritime and coastal policies (EU, Sea basin, national, regional and local level) as Integrated Maritime Policy advisor for French Prime Minister at Secretariat general de la Mer (2008-2011). He contributed to the elaboration and adoption of the French maritime policy in 2009, the law transposition of MSFD as the environmental pillar of the national strategy for the sea and the shoreline. As a consultant since 2014 at Stratégies Mer et Littoral (SML), he has been involved in several projects related to Blue Economy mainly in the Atlantic, the Mediterranean and the Black Sea mobilizing his skills and experience in legal and technical matters to develop and implement endorsed maritime strategies and to engage stakeholders in a sustainable blue economy. He has been the national hub for France since 2018 for WestMed Initiative and 2020 for the Atlantic Action Plan 2.0. Therefore, he has a strong liaison with the national coordinator (Secrétariat géneral de la Mer). He is used to work with French maritime competitiveness clusters (Pôle Mer Méditerranée and Atlantique Bretagne) which assists him in its functions as NH for the respective seabasin in a synergetic approach. He provides with assistance in the design and implementation of integrated maritime and coastal policies and coastal territorial projects, in project management assistance (prospective and strategic studies, drafting of specifications, monitoring of studies, blue economy assessment, maritime spatial planning and integrated coastal zones management) for public authorities, NGOs or private sectors.


National Hub Ireland

Elizabeth Gavin

Elizabeth has over 23 years experience working on EU related programmes as an EU official in both Brussels and The Hague for the European Commission, Eurojust and Clean Aviation (formerly Clean Sky JU). Elizabeth has also considerable experience in international stakeholder management (including Airbus, Rolls Royce, Liebherr, Dassault, Leonardo and Saab (Aviation Research Divisions) She has worked within the European Commission, reported regularly into the European Parliament, and liaised with the European Court of Auditors throughout her career in the EU. Over the past 7 years based in Ireland, Elizabeth has been supporting companies and third level organisations on EU funding opportunities, including working on maritime and blue economy initiatives in Ireland. She has also contributed to policy development initiatives relating to the role of Ports for offshore wind development and the green transition of ports. Elizabeth has a wealth and unique combination of expert knowledge in the research and innovation business community as well as from within the EU institutions. She strikes a unique balance in approach and understanding which she brings to the Atlantic Assistance Mechanism in her role as National Hub for Ireland. Elizabeth speaks fluent French. She has been National Hub for Ireland since January 2020.


National Hub Portugal

Frederico Pinto Ferreira

Frederico Pinto Ferreira is currently Blue Tech Manager at Fórum Oceano where he has been working since 2013 engaged with activities related with ports, shipping and logistics, shipbuilding and ship repair, marine renewables, offshore and ocean technology facilitating networking, stimulating new projects ideas, new business opportunities and supporting international cooperation in these sectors. Graduated as a Regional and Urban Planning Engineer (IST Lisbon) with Post Graduate studies on Renewable Energies, he has a wealth of work experience related with blue economy and maritime affairs, namely: worked for the Forward Studies Unit of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions (CPMR), made part of the Maritime Policy Task Force of European Commission, in Brussels, and was also Executive Director of IDCEM –Institute for the Development of the Knowledge and Economy of the Sea. Since the former period (2019 -2022) he already acts on behalf of Fórum Oceano as National Hub for WestMED initiative.


Ruben Eiras

Ruben Eiras

Ruben Eiras entered the Fórum Oceano team in 2020 as Coordinator for Blue Economy Entrepreneurship, Innovation, Investment and Financing and he is since September 2021 Secretary-general of Fórum Oceano. Prior, he was the Director-General for Maritime Policy, Ministry of the Sea of Portugal (2018-2020), and Advisor for Energy, Innovation and Industry of the Minister of the Sea of Portugal (2015-2018). He held the position of Science and Technology Manager at the Research and Technology Department at Galp Energia (Main Portuguese Oil&Gas Company), and he was Energy Security Program Director at Luso-American Foundation. Also, he was SAS Technical Member Energy Security from NATO Science and Technology Organization and member of the Group of Experts on Natural Gas from the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Ruben graduated in Sociology of Work from Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e Políticas, University of Lisbon, has a Master’s degree in Sustainable Energy Systems, Executive Master MIT Portugal Program and a PhD degree in History, Defense and International Relations from the University Institute of Lisbon and Military Academy.


National Hub Spain

Marta Pascual

Marta Pascual

Marta Pascual is currently also the Spanish National Hub for the Western Mediterranean Initiative (WestMED). She is former participant of the EU MSP Platform and has also been working as a Senior Associate Expert for the EU Commission and ECORYS in works related to MSP for Blue Growth and Blue Economy. Academically, she holds a PhD in Maritime Spatial Planning, is a former Ikerbasque Post-Doctoral Researcher and currently a Guest Researcher at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3, Spain), where she is advancing with the Eco-modelling Research Team on the development of marine ecosystem services models using their developed semantic-modelling platform that uses artificial intelligence – ARIES.  She has more than 11 years of professional experience in the application and implementation of various European environmental and maritime directives such as the MSFD; MSPD; Habitats and Birds Directive, WFD. Her experience in research include various lines of spatial analysis, stakeholder engagement, scenario mapping, participatory mapping and marine and coastal research applied to maritime policies such as MSP, Ecosystem Services Mapping/Modelling, Integrated Coastal Zone Management, Biological Valuation and Ecosystem Services Valuation (ESV).

Pillar Coordinators

Pillar 1: Ports as gateways and hubs for the blue economy

Pillar 2: Blue Skills and Ocean Literacy

Pillar 3: Marine Renewable Energy

Pillar 4: Coastal resilience & Healthy Ocean

Carlos Botana
Ana NORONHA
Kerrie Sheehan
Phil MONBET

Carlos Botana

Head of Sustainability Department, Port of Vigo

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Ana NORONHA

Executive Director of Ciência Viva

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Kerrie Sheehan

Head of Research & Technology at Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland (SEAI)

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Phil MONBET

Deputy Director Pole Mer Bretagne Atlantique

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