Harald Batista is currently assisting several Silicon Valley startups, including Appko, Fankix, Bayesco, with Financing and Marketing Strategies. He is a board member at two Canadian companies: Prophecy Platinum and Prophecy Coal and in the past two decades, he’s been a software programmer, a sales engineer and sales rep at companies such as GE, IBM, Vantive, Peoplesoft and Oracle. He holds an MBA degree from Santa Clara University, an Industrial Engineering and Operations Research BS from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, having begun his studies in electronic engineering at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica (PUC) of Rio de Janeiro. Harald is a member of the prominent Batista family in Brazil that includes Eliezer Batista, the founder of Vale do Rio Doce Company (now Vale).