Miguel Duarte was born in Viseu in 1980, but it was in Coimbra that he lived from the age of 5 until finishing college. He studied at Avelar Brotero Secondary School in Coimbra and enrolled at the University of Coimbra in 1998, majoring in Economics at FEUC. During college, he prioritized associative life, being elected for three consecutive years to the governing bodies of the University and the Academy. As Administrator and President of the Coimbra Academic Association, member of the University Senate and the Board of Directors of the University, he was able to accumulate a set of important soft skills in a short time. Managing political affairs between institutions, creating consensus, and resolving institutional conflicts, managing people, articulating stakeholders (Government, Parliament, Universities, Rectors’ Council, and other Student Associations at the national level), oral and written communication, and, above all, “making things happen”. These were skills that helped him greatly in his professional growth.
He joined Capgemini consulting in 2006 in Lisbon, where he gained new fundamental technical skills to deliver high quality in the strategic consulting business. He quickly managed to combine the base of soft skills he brought with the new technical skills required to progress in strategic consulting. He worked with Government and the private sector on projects of diverse nature.
In 2007, the opportunity arose to join an international team at Strategos (a company founded by Gary Hamel) specialized in strategic innovation consulting. A niche topic that few professionals in the consulting market understood, combined with an opportunity to accelerate the internationalization of his career, were essential drivers in the decision to join that team. At Strategos, between 2008 and 2010, he worked in Spain (Madrid and Barcelona) and South Korea with the C-suite of relevant multinational companies in their sectors, always on projects focused on creating innovation competence and new business models for these companies.
In 2010, the great opportunity arose to open Strategos’ office in Brazil to explore the Brazilian market via strong North American multinational companies. It was the great opportunity to become a Partner in that venture at the age of 30 and take on responsibilities in expansion, managing a small P&L, and, above all, starting something different in a new territory. This was indeed the greatest adventure of his professional and personal life, and it made all the difference for the professional he is today. Between 2010 and 2014, he and his partners worked with the largest Brazilian companies and global leaders in their sectors – Vale, Embraer, Fiat Latin America, Whirlpool Latin America, Intercement, Gerdau, among many others.
It was also during this period that he decided to return to studying. He began his Master’s in Management at the London School of Economics & Political Science (LSE) in executive format in 2012. Despite living in São Paulo, he flew to London every three months for face-to-face classes and spent his nights and weekends in São Paulo writing papers for almost two years. He graduated in 2014 with Distinction and won the Best Dissertation Prize of that year with his thesis dedicated to agency theory in the Private Equity sector.
In 2014, another major change occurred. Despite Strategos’ business having a healthy P&L, being a niche consulting firm (mono service), it was very difficult to expand the business within existing clients. The quality of services provided and the references from CEOs who worked with his team on one hand, and the lack of scale on the other, led them to look for a large company to sell the Brazil operation to. In 2014, EY Brazil acquired their operation and he joined the EY Brazil partners at the age of 34, responsible for developing the innovation and strategy business. From that moment on, he embraced several new challenges in the region (Latam). In 2016, he was invited to be a Board Member of EY Brazil, in 2017, he became the leader of the strategy area of EY Brazil, in 2018, he was invited to lead the Consumer sector of EY Brazil in Latam, and in parallel, he always continued to lead projects in strategy, innovation, and growth in various global and local clients.
In 2021, he began a new phase of his career as a partner at EY (EY Parthenon) in New York. In the last two years, he has developed an innovative agenda focused on creating value in technology projects, focusing on the levers that can best impact P&L, BS, and Cash Flow in these large-scale programs.
He currently lives in New York, in Manhattan, is married, and has two daughters, one five years old and the other two.
Miguel Duarte has been a member of the Portuguese Diaspora Council since May 2024.