Ana Raquel Calháu (She/Her)

CEO | Co-founder at NexAtlas

Served as Coordinator of LAB001, a pre-acceleration program for hardware and hard sciences startups at the Federal University of Itajubá, and was an official mentor for Startup Founder, a nanodegree program at Udacity (University of Silicon Valley). Finalist in the Rising Stars category of the Globant Awards, awarded Founder of the Year in the Vortex 2022 prize, finalist in the Women Innovators award by FINEP, and fellow of the Young Leaders of the Americas Initiative (YLAI) program.

Directly involved with startups since 2012, having mentored over 150 startups in 2 countries in new business creation, pitch development, and growth hacking. Through NexAtlas, participated in the Brazilian startup acceleration program SEED, achieved 3rd place in the largest acceleration program in Latin America (Start-Up Chile), launched a product with the support of Samsung Creative Startups, and ranked in the Top 10 travel tech startups of the 100 Open Startups. With Laticin, was selected among the 10 finalists out of over 800 projects in the global Thought For Food challenge; graduated from the Startup School at Y Combinator, and was one of the 50 selected for the FIEMG Lab 4.0 acceleration program.

Graduated in Information Systems with a focus on Entrepreneurship from the Federal University of Itajubá. Also certified in Venture Deals by Kauffman Fellows, Building and Managing Resilient Teams by the University of Chicago, and completed the MBA Essentials program at the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Location

Itajubá, Brazil

Links

Work style

Qualities I value in my colleagues

  • Ownership
  • efficiency
  • curiosity
  • reliability
  • adaptability

My communication style

  • Casual
  • eloquent
  • articulate
  • transparent
  • genuine

Timeline

  • CEO | Co-founder

    2018 - present