Borned in Venezuela and with a vast experience in academic networks and the Latin American ICT scene, the nomination of Luis Eliécer Cadenas as the new Executive Director of RedCLARA was announced during the opening of the TICAL2017 Conference in San Jose, Costa Rica, at the beginning of last June. The executive began his duties in the advanced Latin American network on August 1st.

Computer engineer with postgraduate studies in economics, telematics, networking and computer science, with almost 30 years of experience in information technologies and telecommunications field both in the private and public domains, in his professional career the Venezuelan Luis Eliécer Cadenas has sought to be an agent of change, growth and development of people and organizations through information and communication technologies. In this line, his role as co-founder, President and member of the Board of Directors of the National Academic Network of Venezuela, REACCIUN, in which he had a central participation between 1996 and 2000 was fundamental. As President of REACCIUN, Cadenas sought to align the organization , infrastructure and resources to the needs of the universities and research and academics centers of his country, achieving the development of the first national physical network (financed with funds from the Inter-American Development Bank), connecting 17 public universities, increasing the availability of bandwidth for the scientific and academic communitties and making it a stable and reliable service.

In the same line of motivation and personal development, Cadenas was President of the Latin American Research Network Association (Enredo 1998-1999), member of the board of the National Supercomputing Center of Venezuela (Cecalcula, 1997-1999) and of the Technological Park of Sartenejas (1997-1999). When he decided to move to the private sector, he stayed related to the academic spectrum while leading the strategy for Cisco's Academic Network Program (2000-2006), then, motivated by adding new knowledge to his expertise, Cadenas moved within Cisco to the commercial arena, serving as Account Manager for the public sector of Venezuela (2006-2009), then for service providers (2009-2013), until 2014 when he moved with his family to Guatemala to lead the business strategy of the company with America Movil in Central America. Until becoming CEO of RedCLARA on August 1, 2017, Luis Eliécer Cadenas held the position of Account Manager for Claro Central in Cisco.

"RedCLARA has developed several projects that have positively impacted its members and communities. The deployment of optic fiber, increasing speeds and reducing operating costs of the infrastructure, the creation of services and tools such as Colaboratorio, the TICAL Conference and the successful management of several projects funded by the European Commission are very clear examples of this" , states showing his appreciation for the history of the network and the work carried out by his predecessor, Florencio Utreras, and by the team he leads.

But what is the vision of Cadenas regarding the future of our advanced network? "RedCLARA must play a leading role: by guiding and helping to create the conditions for more solid Academic Networks, contributing to the design of public policies that support them, increasing and expanding the sources of income, catalyzing regional projects to help increase the use and relevance of the Academic Networks and RedCLARA itself, and evangelizing its own community to build the bases of researchers who take advantage of these networks existence. In this way, increasing the relevance of RedCLARA for Academic Networks and their countries, RedCLARA sows the seeds of its sustainability and development. "

With regard to the route that Cadenas will follow during the beginning of its mandate, he recently presented to the Board of Directors a strategy based on trends and environmental variables, structured into four main lines of action: improving finances, increasing the relevance and evolution of the infrastructure, increasing the use of data. These will be the strength lines of the first months of its management.

Motivated by promoting the creation of an appropriate environment to foster innovation and social appropriation of scientific knowledge, the incoming Executive Director will seek to increase open access to the resources of the scientific community, favoring the support to the Academic Networks to achieve their mission by fostering the growth of the research community that uses the infrastructure, to train and educate the scientific communities in the use of the resources of the Academic Networks and RedCLARA, promoting and coordinating regional research projects that use the services of RedCLARA and its partner networks; and increasing the dialogue with the research communities. All this, of course, on a state-of-the-art technology infrastructure, with maximum capabilities, stable and reliable.

The challenges that Cadenas must face are big and complex, but at RedCLARA this has never been a barrier. In the upcoming days, the Executive Director will meet with his work team, members of the Board of Directors and representatives of the academic networks that are part of RedCLARA and of those institutions with which the advanced Latinamerican network carries out joint initiatives, to start the actions that will lead him and his team to the achievement of these goals.

Fonte: RedCLARA