Carlos Moedas

Between 2011 and 2014 he served as Secretary of State in the XIX Constitutional Government of Portugal. In March 2021, Moedas announced his candidacy as mayor of Lisbon in the 2021 local elections, and was elected on 26 September of the same year. Moedas won reelection to a second term in October 2025.

Carlos Moedas studied at Instituto Superior Técnico, Harvard Business School and Harvard University. The recorded working language is Portuguese. Employment is recorded with Lisbon City Council. Positions recorded include member of the Assembly of the Republic and European Commissioner for Research, Innovation and Science. Distinctions recorded are Grand Officer of the Order of Prince Henry.

Moedas was born to a communist journalist and a seamstress in Beja, Alentejo, southern Portugal, in 1970. He studied at Lisbon University, graduating in 1993 with a degree in Civil Engineering from the Instituto Superior Técnico. He spent his final year studying at the ENPC (Paris) via the Erasmus Programme. He was one of the first Portuguese students to undertake an Erasmus exchange.

After leaving university, Moedas worked as a project manager for the Suez Group in France between 1993 and 1998. He then took postgraduate studies at Harvard Business School, graduating in 2000 with the degree of MBA, after which he came back to Europe to work in mergers and acquisitions for Goldman Sachs. He then worked at Eurohypo Investment Bank in its Real Estate Investment Banking Division, before returning, in August 2004, to Portugal, when Moedas joined the real estate consulting company Aguirre Newman Portugal (now Savills Portugal) becoming Managing Partner until 2008, when he set up his own investment management company, Crimson Investment Management.

Following the Eurozone crisis, Moedas was appointed coordinator of the Social Democratic Party (PSD) Economic Research Unit. He and Eduardo Catroga led PSD negotiations in the run-up to Portugal's 2011 State Budget, following which he was selected by PSD to contest the Beja constituency in the legislative elections held on the 5th of June 2011. Moedas was elected to Parliament, becoming the first PSD Member of Parliament for that district since 1995. The day after entering Parliament, on 21 June 2011, the Prime Minister appointed him to his Cabinet in the XIX Constitutional Government as Secretary of State. Moedas oversaw EASME (Executive Agency for Small and Medium-sized Enterprises), the agency created to monitor and control the implementation of the structural reforms agreed in the context of the assistance programme by a troika composed of the European Commission, European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund. In 2014, Pedro Passos Coelho, Prime Minister of Portugal, nominated him as European Commissioner, and Moedas' name was approved by EC President-elect Jean-Claude Juncker on 1 September. On 1 November 2014, Moedas became European Commissioner for Research, Science and Innovation. In March 2021, Moedas announced his candidacy as Mayor of Lisbon in the 2021 local elections, and was elected on 26 September of the same year. He took office on 18 October 2021.