Attending the Brasil Project Conference in Cambridge was a valuable opportunity to connect my academic work on Brazilian political institutions with broader conversations about development, sustainability, and global leadership. Organized by Brazilian students at Harvard and MIT, the conference brought together students, researchers, policymakers, and professionals to reflect on Brazil’s future from multiple perspectives. For me, it created a space to think more critically about how the institutional questions I study relate to real-world debates and decisions.
One of the panels that stood out most was the conversation featuring Congresswoman Tabata Amaral. A central theme in her remarks was the need to shift attention away from an overly presidential focus and toward Congress as a key site of policymaking. Her argument that “a bad Congress can bring down a good president” highlighted the importance of legislative institutions in shaping outcomes, reinforcing ideas I have encountered in my research on democratic deepening. She also emphasized the importance of focusing on concrete policy results, such as the “Pé-de-Meia” program (a financial incentive and savings-based education program designed to promote school retention and completion among public high school students), and of building cross-party coalitions to move beyond polarization. These points closely connect to my work through the Kellogg Developing Researchers program, where I have been studying how institutions such as Congress and the judiciary have evolved since the 1988 Constitution.
At the same time, other speakers pushed the conversation toward Brazil’s role as a global actor. In the panel “Sustainability: A Geopolitical Asset in a Fragmenting World?”, Marcos Troyjo, former president of the New Development Bank (BRICS), and Helder Barbalho, former governor of Pará, framed sustainability as something much more strategic than I had previously thought. What stood out to me was the idea that Brazil is not just participating in global climate debates, but has the potential to shape them, especially through the Amazon and the development of the bioeconomy. It made me realize that sustainability in Brazil is deeply tied to questions of state capacity: attracting international investment, building credible partnerships, and actually implementing policies at scale all depend on strong institutions.
Later, a session featuring Esther Duflo, a Nobel Prize–winning economist at MIT and co-founder of J-PAL, focused more directly on how climate policy can actually be designed and implemented. She emphasized designing policies that are simple, measurable, and able to reach people directly. The idea of something like a “PIX do Clima”—a system inspired by Brazil’s instant payment platform to transfer small, direct climate incentives—was especially interesting because it framed climate policy in a more concrete way, thinking about how to build mechanisms that people can actually use and respond to. It made me think more about how, in Brazil, the challenge isn’t just setting ambitious goals but making sure there are systems in place to implement them effectively.
Beyond the panels themselves, one of the most valuable aspects of the conference was the opportunity to engage with participants from different fields. Conversations with students, researchers, and professionals working in policy, finance, and technology highlighted how interconnected these areas are, especially when thinking about Brazil’s development trajectory. These exchanges helped me better understand how similar questions are approached from different perspectives. I am especially grateful to the Kellogg Institute for making this experience possible and for supporting the opportunity to connect my research through the Kellogg Developing Researchers program with broader, interdisciplinary conversations about Brazil’s future.