Fernando Figueredo

Bio

Dr. Figueredo is the Executive Director of Career Services at Florida International University (FIU), the fifth largest university in the U.S. In this position he is responsible for managing a team of professionals focused on expanding students' career opportunities as well as their professional development. He took over this position in April of 2014 after serving for almost three years as the Director of Communications and External Affairs for Miami-Dade County, where he was also a member of the Mayor's Executive Committee. During his time with the County, he was responsible for supervising a team of 37 Public Information Officers focused on managing all external communications programs for the County. These programs included, crisis communications, news-media relations, community support, and social media initiatives for the Office of the Mayor and all 25 departments of Miami-Dade County, the fourth largest municipal government in the U.S. Before joining the County, Dr. Figueredo was the Chair of the Public Relations and Advertising Faculty in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Florida International University, a position he took over in 2007. Prior to joining FIU, Dr. Figueredo was a partner with Porter Novelli, a global strategic communications agency with offices in 69 countries and headquarters in NY, where he was the Managing Director for the 17 country network of agencies in Latin America. In this position Dr. Figueredo led teams responsible for managing the corporate communications and news-media relations for major multinationals operating in the Latin America region, including AOL, AT&T, Chevron, General Electric, HP, IBM, MasterCard, Microsoft, Visa, and many others. He also led the Multicultural practice for the agency. In addition to profit and loss (P&L) responsibilities, he also formed and led the Crisis Management Task Force for the Latin America region.

Previous to his time with Porter Novelli, Dr. Figueredo served as Vice President of Corporate Communications for America Online-Latin America, a publicly traded joint venture (NASDAQ: AOLA) between AOL and the Cisneros Group of Companies, one of the top multimedia companies in Latin America. Before moving to AOLA, Dr. Figueredo held a similar position with Lucent Technologies, where he served as Vice President of Corporate Communications for Lucent's International Divisions from 1999 to 2000, and for the Americas from 1995 to 1999. Prior to that, he served as AT&T's Region Director of Public Relations in the Caribbean and Latin America. Dr. Figueredo has also been involved in venture capital initiatives, having been the principal "Angel Investor" in a technology and arts startup: ArtistaMundo.com. The startup was successful in obtaining second-level funding and it is still operating as an online community of artists.

Dr. Figueredo holds a Ph.D. in Mass Communications from the University of Seville in Spain, an MBA from Florida International University and a BS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Florida. He has attended numerous senior management seminars at prestigious institutions such as The London Business School, Babson University, Georgetown University, and the University of Pennsylvania. Figueredo also holds the accreditation certification of APR (Accredited in Public Relations), the highest professional accreditation from the Public Relations Society of America.

Courses Taught

ISS 6XXX: Reputation and Crisis Management