Rui Beja

Rui Beja was associated with Círculo de Leitores, a book club publishing house then a subsidiary of Bertelsmann, the largest European media group, for thirty years starting in 1971.
Between 1992 and 2001 he served as president, a position he held concurrently with the presidency of the Board of Directors of the Círculo de Leitores Foundation, since its establishment in 1995, and he was also president of Bertelsmann Portuguesa.
He was involved in several editorial and sociocultural projects, most notably the publication of important reference works in Portuguese historiography, as well as the creation of the publishing house Temas e Debates (1994), the Círculo de Leitores Foundation (1995), the José Saramago Literary Prize (1998) and the Reading Olympics (1998).
Due to his work with this publishing group, he was awarded the title of Commander of the Order of Merit by the President of the Republic on June 10, 2002.
In the field of economics and management consulting, between 2002 and 2007, he participated in several business development and restructuring projects and, representing the Order of Certified Public Accountants, was a member of... Management Committee of ESRA – European Sustainability Reporting Awards, having been part of the respective international jury in 2004 and chaired the national jury in 2004 and 2005.
In July 2008, he was elected president of the Board of Directors of APEL (Portuguese Association of Publishers and Booksellers) for the three-year period 2008/2011, representing Lisboa Editora; in September 2009, with the two main objectives of the candidacy program achieved (modernization of the Lisbon and Porto Book Fairs and aggregation of the publishing and bookselling association movement that had split into two entities in 1999 - APEL and UEP), he ceased his functions in view of the recomposition of the Social Bodies resulting from the reunification process in APEL.
Following four decades of professional involvement as a manager, predominantly in the book industry, he began to work in the field of writing, dissemination and research related to business management, social responsibility and, fundamentally, publishing, books and reading.
Considering his public intervention and research in support of books, he was awarded the honorary title of Honorary Member of the Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures of the University of Aveiro in September 2025.
He is the author of the following works: Risk Management: Managing, Reporting, and Auditing Business Risks (2004); In the Window of Books: A Memory of 30 Years of the Readers' Circle (2011); Edition in Portugal (1970-2010): Paths and Perspectives (2012), Book Democracy in Portugal - Transitions, Protagonists and Sociocultural Evolution (2019) and 50 Years in the World of Books - From Administration to Research (2024).