Rio 2016 Appoint Commercial Team with Flavio Pestana to Head Up Division

January 19, 2012

The Rio 2016 Organising Committee for the Olympic and Paralympic Games has changed its commercial structure by appointing a commercial team.

Flavio Pestana will be the chief commercial officer (CCO) for a team which will also have its Sponsorship Sales director, therapy Rodrigo Frazao; Partner Services director, Henrique Leal; and head of Licensing, Retail and Concessions, Sylmara Multini.

Pestana will be responsible for the Games’ sponsorship, ticketing and licensing programmes as well as negotiations with the International Olympic Committee regarding Rio 2016’s share of broadcasting rights and international sponsorship agreements. The new CCO will report to the chief executive officer, Leonardo Gryner, who had also been acting as interim chief commercial officer.

The new chief commercial officer has had a career in the media sector as CEO of two of Brazil’s largest business newspapers (Gazeta Mercantil and Valor Economico), as well as the Bom Dia Communication Network and the Diario de Sao Paulo newspaper. He was also superintendent of Folha Group’s newspapers and magazines, a board member of Folha de S.Paulo newspaper and Plural Publishers and Editors, and chairman of the board of the UOL online media portal and Internet company.

Pestana has a degree in Engineering and postgraduate degrees in Business Management from Harvard Business School and Dom Cabral Foundation/INSEAD (the European Institute of Business Administration), as well as in Finance from Getulio Vargas Foundation.

With a wealth of experience in the commercial area, Rodrigo Frazao has participated in the preparation of several sales and relationship plans for corporations and events such as AB-Inbev and Casa Show. In his last professional experience, he participated in Technos’ IPO.

Henrique Leal is a marketing specialist, an expert in communications strategic planning, mainly customer relationship management (CRM) and digital marketing. He has over 20 years’ experience in marketing and advertising and has worked in large advertising agencies such as Ogilvy and Young & Rubican. Before joining Rio 2016™, he was vice-president of Sun/MRM, the digital marketing and CRM agency of the McCann Erikson Group.

Sylmara Multini is a business administrator with a degree from the University of Sao Paulo. She has extensive experience as an executive in the marketing area, mainly in sales, sponsorship, concessions and licensing for large corporations such as Volkswagen, the Walt Disney Company and Mattel. Before joining Rio 2016™, Sylmara held the position of Licensing director for Warner Bros Latin America.

Carlos Arthur Nuzman, president of Rio 2016 commented on the appoitments: “Hiring a professional of the highest caliber such as Flavio Pestana and the other new members of the commercial department ensures the confidence and reliability we need to conduct such a record-breaking sponsorship programme and develop new revenue generating programmes for staging memorable Olympic and Paralympic Games in 2016.”