R. Ibiraçu, 226 - São Paulo, SP, Brasil
F +55 11 2386 1320 - aoka@aoka.com.br
Our team is made up of people with diverse experiences and skills. We wish to learn, share and be part of a community with conscience.
We pay attention to detail, develop the most appropriate itineraries, and carry out activities with our partners along the journey. Each one of us has an inestimable and essential role, which ensures the fluid flow of each journey in an atmosphere of enjoyment, discovery, and wonder.
Our Team
Daniel Contrucci, Co-founder and Director of Operations
Daniel has loved to travel and experience new cultures since he was a child. Following this passion, he spent 4 years studying abroad as a university student in Business Administration in California. Upon his return to Brazil, he felt that he needed to change his life in order to serve the sustainable development of his country. He saw that he could combine this mission with his passion for travel in the form of sustainable tourism. This insight led him to go back to university for his degree in Tourism Management. In 2001, following the completion of his studies, Daniel launched his career in the field of sustainable tourism, creating innovative trips for organizations around the world. In addition, he volunteered for Greenpeace Brazil. He co-founded a non-profit organization called ProScience, which explores sustainable means for humanity to protect the environment and help communities. Together with fellow entrepreneur Ricardo Gravina, he developed another model that combines the best of both non-profit and for-profit worlds. They founded the social business enterprise Aoka - a new model for sustainable tourism - in 2010.
Ricardo Lindenberg Gravina, Co-founder, Director of Sales & Public Relations
Ricardo holds a post-graduate degree in Marketing and has developed his expertise through extensive sales experience in the for-profit sector. Like Daniel, he has a profound love for learning about different cultures, which has led him to explore many countries such as Bolivia, France, Italy, New Zealand, Turkey, the United States, Uruguay, and South Africa. In his travels, he always sought to understand the local reality and its similarities and differences compared to his own culture. Ricardo’s window into the varied issues and challenges of these places left him restless with an aspiration to create something that would really make a difference in people’s lives. Combined with a strong inclination for entrepreneurship, he spent many years searching for an ideal and sustainable model that would calm his unrest. The conception of Aoka was the perfect union of all his wishes: to travel, to engage and to help.
Ude Lottfi, Partner & Marketing Director
Some of his biggest passions include traveling and sports. Avid participant in Eco-Adventure Races; loves to mountain bike, trek, play tennis, run, practice yoga, club soccer every Monday, etc. Has traveled to 13 countries and most of Brazil while always observing and respecting the local cultures as he takes in new experiences. Ex-Marketing manager, left his post to join Aoka. Under – Graduate degree in Publicity and Advertisement; Complimentary courses in Strategic Sustainable Planning (Coaching from Simone Ramounoulou – Director TNS ® Brazil); Project Management, Strategic Planning and Creation from MIAMI ADD SCHOOL/ESPM; Project Development Methodology from SOAP.
Deniza Kulaxazova, International Relations
Deniza is an expert in communication and social business. Here at Aoka she is responsible for meeting the international audience and establish effective communication with this market. Always connected to sustainable practices, she develops complex projects and contributes with many out-of-the-box ideas.
Deniza left Bulgaria, her country of origin, and moved to the UK and France to finish her studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Warwick. Her career in marketing was driven by a willingness to find creative solutions to social problems, bringing her directly to the Aoka team.
Tauana Costa, Business Coordinator
Moved by a passion for travel, Tauana studied Tourism at the University of São Paulo. For 5 years, she visited diverse cities throughout Brazil to conduct research on domestic and international tourism for the Ministry of Tourism and private consultancies. Moreover, she worked in conjunction with one of the Marketing Bureaus of EMBRATUR (Brazilian Tourism Govermental Agency) in the areas of international promotion and the training of local tourism agents. In her monograph, she studied the Management of National Parks, using the case study of the National Park of Chapada dos Guimarães in Mato Grosso, Brazil. During university, she served as a volunteer on the University Extension Project “Rose of the Winds”, which promoted Socially-conscious Tourism by putting children and youth from the periphery of São Paulo in contact with notable sites in the city and region. In this way, the project promoted ownership of leisure activities by peripheral communities, which otherwise have limited access to them.
Maria Pia Amaral
Driven by the desire to meet diverse people and cultures, she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in hotel management at SENAC University located in São Paulo, Brazil. She has worked in various hotels and at the Hostelling International. By studying abroad in Montreal, Canada, Maria Pia discovered her life long passion: cultural integration. Since then, she has not stopped traveling having visited Germany, Poland, Hungary, England, France, Italy, and the Czech Republic. Within Aoka, she has united her two passions: the helping of people by way of travel and developing social projects.
Karen Demavivas, Advisor for Special Projects & International Relations
Karen has a passion for exploring all the cultures and ecologies that make this world diverse. In New York, she has held positions at various cultural institutions. In the realm of international culture and development work, she was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to work as program coordinator on community-based cultural projects in Northern Thailand and served as the UNESCO-Fulbright Fellow for Culture with a focus on World Heritage sites in Paris. She then worked as a culture specialist at UNESCO and the UN Populaton Fund where her portfolios included heritage conservation, indigenous issues, creative economies, and intercultural/interfaith dialogue. She has flown on UN missions to provide technical assistance to forums in Afghanistan and South Africa. Karen hopes to build green programs for community empowerment at Aoka. She holds a BS in Cultural Tourism Management and an MA in Art History and Criticism.
