Graduate in Business Management, co-founder and CEO of Village Underground Lisboa, a cultural and coworking hub for the creative industries. An award-winning project Best New Project of the Year by Time Out magazine and One of the Best Seven Things to happen in Lisbon by Visão magazine.

Mariana herself was awarded the Innovation in Business Prize by Máxima and Jornal de Negócios in 2014 and was chosen as one of the 12 women entrepreneurs to have their own image replicated in a Barbie, as a part of the You can be whatever you want campaign. She was also a part of the 50 Women that do more for Lisbon list, chosen by Time Out magazine. She worked for 18 years in the music industry promoting new talents in bands and electronic music DJs. 3 of those years were lived in London, where she devoted herself to producing several events to promote Portuguese music, using her vast expertise in press relations, advisory and public relations in the music industry.

As the founder of Village Underground Lisboa, a reference in the entrepreneurial world, and as a key figure in the more alternative side of culture in a global and creative new Lisbon, she has been asked to take part in international conferences in Dubai, Lyon and Madrid and also in Portugal, at events such as Creative Mornings, Resident Advisor, Microsoft Conference, Martinhal Hotel Resorts, Rock in Rio Innovation Week, Start-Up Guide and Start-Up Portugal.

In 2016, Executiva magazine published an interview with her, titled Underground Entrepreneur” and, in 2017, Forbes Portugal devoted two pages to her career as the founder of one of “the capital’s most emblematic spaces”. She published an opinion piece in Monocle about Lisbon’s cultural revolution and was featured on the cover for the first issue of the American magazine Perfect Strangers.