Hugo Aguilaniu is the president-director of Serrapilheira, an organization to the support of young scientific researchers. He is a biologist who studies the genetic basis for aging processes. He has a PhD from the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.
José Mauro de Lima Ó de Almeida is the current Pará State Secretary of the Environment and Sustainability. He has dedicated his life to law and public service, previously serving in the Pará office of the Solicitor General of Brazil and as the head of the legal department in the Pará State Ministry of the Environment. He was raised in Belém do Pará and received degrees from the University of Amazônia and the Federal University of Pará.
Helder Zahluth Barbalho is governor of the state of Pará, elected in 2018. He has held his first elected office at the age of 21 and was elected mayor of the city of Ananindeua at 25, becoming the youngest mayor in the history of Pará. Barbalho studied administration at the University of Amazônia and received his MBA at the Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV).
Paulo Barreto has had a nearly 30-year career at IMAZON, a research institute dedicated to conservation of the Amazon. His research interests include forest policy and economics and land use in the Brazilian Amazon. He earned his undergraduate degree in Forestry Engineering from the Federal Rural University of Amazônia (UFRA) and holds a Master’s in Forest Science from Yale University.
Marcelo Behar is the Corporate Affairs Officer at Natura & Co., a global cosmetics group. He began his career as a journalist at Folha de São Paulo, a leading newspaper, before spending five years working for the Brazilian government. He received degrees in sociology and law at the University of São Paulo (USP).
Fernanda Camargo is one of the founding partners of Wright Capital Wealth Management. Fernanda has 25 years of experience in the financial markets and has worked for Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch, among other institutions. She was one of the founders of the LiveWright Institute, an NGO dedicated to improving Olympic sports in Brazil and is a Board member of Atletas pelo Brasil – a sports-advocacy organization in Brazil. She studied Economics at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP).
Domingos Campos is the director of Health, Safety, Security, Environmental & Corporate Social Responsibility at Norsk Hydro, a Norwegian mining company. He has worked in the field of environmental health and safety in the mining industry for almost 20 years.
Ivaneide Bandeira Cardoso is director and researcher at Kanidé, an organization dedicated to the protection of Brazil’s indigenous peoples and their environment. She specializes in indigenous ethnology, territory management, and “ethnozoning”. She completed her undergraduate studies in history and her graduate studies in geography at the Federal University of Rondônia (UNIR).
Luana Carvalhosa is the senior manager of Social Programs at Norsk Hydro, a Norwegian mining company. She has been working in the field of environmental management for over a decade and holds degrees in biology, sustainable engineering and environmental engineering.
Debora Diniz is a professor of anthropology and law at the University of Brasilia and a co-founder and researcher at The Institute of Bioethics, Human Rights and Gender. She is also a decorated documentary filmmaker whose work explores themes of bioethics, feminism, human rights and health. She is a member of the Advisory Committee of Global Doctors for Choice, Brazil and Vice Chair of the board of the International Women’s Health Coalition.
Marcelo Furtado is the executive director of Alana Foundation, an organization that promotes children’s rights, and co-founder of Believe.Earth. He has nearly 30 years of experience as an activist committed to advancing sustainability and social justice through innovation and public mobilization.
Toby Gardner is a Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute and Director of the Transparency for Sustainable Economies initiative, Trase. Toby has twenty years’ experience working on research and policy challenges facing the sustainable development of tropical landscapes. He holds degrees from the University of Edinburgh and the University of East Anglia.
André Guimarães is currently the executive director of the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), an NGO dedicated to the sustainable development of the Amazon. He also founded and manages Brasil Florestas, a company that focused on implementing forest products as environmental services. He has a degree in Agronomy from the University of Brasília (UnB) and a Master’s in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University.
Marina Hirota is a professor at the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC) and a grant recipient of the Serrapilheira foundation. Her interests are wide-ranging: after receiving her bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, she completed a master’s degree in Electrical Engineering and a doctorate in Meteorology. During her post-doctorate at the University of Wageningen, The Netherlands, she pivoted to the field of Ecology, applying mathematical theory of complex systems to the study of biodiversity in the Amazon.
Luciano Huck is a household name in Brazil, having been a TV presenter for over 20 years with Globo, the largest TV network in Latin America. He is also the president of Instituto Criar, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing low income youth professional training in the art of TV and filmmaking.
Daniela Lerda is the Climate and Land Use Alliance’s Coordinator in Brazil based in the Ford Foundation’s Rio de Janeiro office. Previously she was founder and leader of PADMA Environmental Consulting, a firm working at the intersection of business and biodiversity conservation. She earned her undergraduate degree in Human Sciences and Psychology from Royal Holloway University of London and holds a master’s in international education and Ecology from the George Washington University.
Simon A. Levin is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University and the Director of the Center for BioComplexity in the Princeton Environmental Institute. His research examines the structure and functioning of ecosystems, the dynamics of disease, and the coupling of ecological and socioeconomic systems. Levin is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and a Foreign Member of the Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, and the Istituto Lombardo (Milan). He has over 500 publications and is the editor of the Encyclopedia of Biodiversity and the Princeton Guide to Ecology.
José Roberto Marinho is president of the Roberto Marinho Foundation and vice-president of the media conglomerate Grupo Globo. The Roberto Marinho foundation promotes the right to education, encourages leadership, and works to preserve the environment and cultural heritage of Brazil. As Globo’s vice-president for social responsibility, he also oversees Globo’s philanthropic activities.
Marcelo Medeiros is currently a visiting scholar at Princeton University. Previously he was a professor at the University of Brasília (UnB). Medeiros is a researcher at the Brazilian Institute of Applied Economic Research (IPEA). Among other awards, he has received the Fred L. Soper Award from the World Health Organization for best publication in the field of public health. His research interests include Gender, Poverty, Social Inequality and Mobility, Health, Education, and Disability.
Raphael Medeiros is the executive director of the Entrepreneurial Center of Amazônia, a startup dedicated to promoting sustainable businesses and entrepreneurship in the Amazon. He holds an MBA from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio).
João Meirelles is an activist and author. For over 20 years he has been the director of the Peabiru Institute, an organization dedicated to increasing appreciation for cultural and biological diversity and supporting processes of social transformation in the Amazon. As an author, he has published 18 works and received the SESC Literature prize for his most recent work.
João Moreira Salles is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and journalist. Moreira Salles is the president of the Moreira Salles Institute. Besides his contributions to Brazilian cinema, he is also the founding editor of Piauí magazine, a leading producer of narrative journalism. The Moreira Salles Institute, founded by his father, is a leading cultural and arts center in Brazil.
Robert Muggah specializes in security, cities and new technologies. He co-founded the Igarapé Institute – an internationally recognized think and do tank – and the SecDev Group – devoted to disrupting digital risk and strengthening cyber security. Robert is also a senior adviser to McKinseys and is faculty at Singularity University. For two decades he has advised national and municipal governments, tech companies and international organizations on issues ranging from crime prevention to urban planning. Muggah advises the World Economic Forum’s Council on Cities and the annual Global Risk Report and is a contributor to the Atlantic, BBC, CNN, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, Guardian, Economist, New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today, and Wired.
Rob Nixon is the Currie C. and Thomas A. Barron Family Professor in the Humanities and the Environment. He is affiliated with the Princeton Environmental Institute’s initiative in the environmental humanities. Before joining Princeton in 2015, Nixon held the Rachel Carson Professorship in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he was active in the Center for Culture, History and Environment. He is the author of four books: London Calling: V.S. Naipaul, Postcolonial Mandarin (Oxford); Homelands, Harlem and Hollywood: South African Culture and the World Beyond (Routledge); Dreambirds: The Natural History of a Fantasy (Picador); and Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor (Harvard), which was selected by Choice as an outstanding book of 2011.
Amilcare Porporato is the Thomas J. Wu ’94 Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
at Princeton University and is a Princeton Environmental Institute faculty member. His research focuses on the quantitative description and prediction of the complex dynamics of the terrestrial water cycle, with special interest in the impact of the hydrologic cycle on temporal and spatial variability of ecosystem processes (eco-hydrology) and the related energy, carbon and nutrient cycles. His research methods draw from fluid mechanics, soil physics, plant physiology, statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics, non-equilibrium thermodynamics, and complex system science.
Rob Pringle is currently Assistant Professor at Princeton University in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. He seeks to understand how direct and indirect species interactions (predation, herbivory, competition, mutualism) combine with abiotic factors (climate, habitat heterogeneity) to determine the diversity and abundance of species at multiple scales. His method is rooted in natural history and manipulative field experiments and supplemented by whatever computational, isotopic, molecular, remote-sensing, and social-scientific approaches are necessary to understand the mechanisms underlying phenomena in nature. Most of Rob’s work is done in the savannas of eastern and southern Africa.
Juliana Santiago has worked for over a decade in the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES), currently serving as Advisor to the Deputy Director of the Sustainability Division. She advises on BNDES’ Amazon Fund management, its Social and Environmental Responsibility Policy, and its strategy in implementing the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Accounting from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and an MBA from the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio).
José A. Scheinkman is the Charles and Lynn Zhang Professor of Economics at Columbia University, Theodore A. Wells ‘29 Professor of Economics (emeritus) at Princeton University and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has served as a consultant to several financial institutions and serves on the board of Cosan Limited, a sugar, ethanol an energy producer in Brazil. His current research focuses on speculation in financial markets and on the effect of increases in liquidity on financial fragility.
Marcio Senne de Moraes is Vale’s external affairs director. Previously, he was external affairs head for Europe and North America based out of Switzerland, external affairs general manager in Rio de Janeiro and socio-political risk assessment and mitigation manager. Senne de Moraes is currently vice-president of the China-Brazil Business Council and is a member of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network working group on transparency in the extractive sector.
Corina Tarnita is an associate professor of the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University. Her research examines the organization and emergent properties of complex adaptive systems at multiple scales, from single cells to entire ecosystems. Her interests range from multicellularity to social behaviors in bacteria, insects or humans, to the effects of population structure and spatial patterns on evolutionary and ecological dynamics, to mutualistic interactions especially in the context of multi-species networks of symbionts.
Ana Toni is the Executive Director of the Climate and Society Institute (ICS) and is a partner with the consulting company Public Interest Management (GIP). She was chair of the board of Greenpeace for 6 years and also worked with ActionAid Brazil and the Ford Foundation.
Johannes van de Ven is the Executive Director of Swiss-based Good Energies Foundation and an Advisory Board Member of Selco, a Bangalore-based solar company. Previously he was the managing director of Porticus Latin America, a philanthropic management organization, and worked in investment banking. He studied development economics and theology at the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) and earned his doctorate in moral theology and business ethics from University of Louvain, Belgium.
David Wilcove focuses on developing innovative ways to protect biodiversity in an increasingly hot, hungry, and crowded world by combining research in ecology and the social sciences. He and his research group (The Drongos) have worked in Asia, Africa, South America, North America, and Australasia. In recent years he has devoted particular attention to wildlife conservation in Asia. He is the author of two books and many scientific publications, book chapters, and popular articles dealing with biodiversity conservation, endangered species, ornithology, island biogeography, and conservation policy. His work has garnered awards from the Society for Conservation Biology, Defenders of Wildlife, the Pew Foundation, The Wildlife Society, and the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute. Prior to joining the Princeton faculty, he was senior ecologist at the Environmental Defense Fund in Washington, DC, and before then he worked at The Wilderness Society and The Nature Conservancy.
Daniel Zarin is Director of Programs of the Climate and Land Use Alliance since its inception in 2010. He was previously a university professor at the University of New Hampshire and the University of Florida. He earned a Master’s of Forest Science from Yale University, and a Ph.D. in Geology from the University of Pennsylvania.