Activist. Pioneer Entrepreneur. Social Innovator. Founder and Director of Sinal do Vale. Co-Founder of WEDO (Women, Environment and Development Organization). Three decades advocating women’s equality in global policy.

Thais has over three decades of experience working to include women in the discussions about climate change. Her global leadership journey has given her a unique understanding of the potential of hidden connections and interactions to create powerful transformation. Thais develops and works in teams based on partnerships rather than hierarchy, and is skilled at drawing out each individual’s authentic essence to craft the conditions for positive change to occur.

Thais was one of the leaders of women’s participation at the Earth Summit in 1992 and co-founder of WEDO (Women, Environment and Development Organization), which played a major role at UN Global Conferences throughout the 90s and continues to be an important women’s global advocacy organization. 

With the creation of CEMINA (Communication, Education, and Information), Thais connected women to the potential of radio in Brazil, creating a powerful network of 400 women’s radio programs distributed all over Brazil. 

In 1990 Thais founded REDEH (Human Development Network), a development NGO that implements programs focused on Just and Sustainable Development, Environmental Protection and Racial and Gender Equality. 

Thais is Founder and Director of Sinal do Vale, a learning community and international platform that seeks to create agents of transformation for resilient communities. Sinal do Vale represents a synthesis of Thais’s experience and learning in her career. She wanted to create a space where inspired change agents could design, experiment and implement concrete initiatives for the transition to sustainability. 

Her passionate mission is to create concrete initiatives with tangible results to enhance resilience and community. Projects that manifest as platforms for new agents of positive transformation that can heal divides and make a difference to humanity.

Thais and her organizations have received numerous prestigious awards over the decades and she has published many articles and papers in selected magazines and books worldwide. 

Thais has held key positions in major global leadership organizations, such as being a member of the board of LEAD (Leadership for Environment and Development), and currently Member of the World Future Council and Responsible Leader of Latin America of BMW Foundation Herbert Quandt among others. 

She has an MA in Public Administration from the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University and in International Development by the United Nations University.