Our Team

Vice President for the 2023-2025 term, is a social entrepreneur who founded Vencer Juntos, a not-for-profit program to promote entrepreneurship and local community-managed revolving funds (Fundos Rotativos Solidários) in low-income communities in the interior of Brazil’s Northeast Region. Barbara has become one of Brazil’s leading practitioners on revolving funds and solidarity finance. Before moving to Brazil in 2003, Barbara, a German national, held positions at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in Boston and Frankfurt, UNICEF (Brasilia and New York) and the Ford Foundation (Mexico City). Barbara holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, an MA in International Relations from Yale University.

Director for the 2023-2025 term, works in social project management with deep experience in team building and training and has been an activist for solidarity-based economy. Since 2014, she has been acting as Adjunct Coordinator of the Vencer Juntos Network. Cristina joined Esquel in 2011 to manage various solidarity-based economy projects until 2021. A recognized specialist in this area, she was elected in 2025 as Counselor on the Ceará State Council for Solidarity-based economy. Graduated in social sciences by the São Paulo Methodist University, and with a specialization in renewable energies, Cristina held positions at Caritas Brazil and in the Municipal Development Secretariat of Fortaleza. In recent years, Cristina worked as social responsibility analyst responsible for dealing with the impact of the dam breaks  in Minas Gerais, and currently serves as a consultant to the social responsibility area of Petrobras in Northeast Brazil.

Barros is the current President of Esquel Brasil. Master of Public Administration and bachelor in Philosophy, he was a consultant for local and regional development programs and social impact analysis on projects financed by the Interamerican Development Bank and World Bank and worked for many years in the public sector in planning, information technology and consulting on information system planning, development and management. Lincoln represents Esquel Brazil on the CONFOCO – National Council on Collaboration of the President’s Office’s General Secretariat.

Rubens Born is Director for the 2023 – 2025 term, researcher and collaborator in Esquel’s  environmental, society and public policy program, member of the Management Board of the Escazu Movement Brazil, President of the Board of Directors of IDEC – Institute for Consumer Defense, member of the coordination of FBOMS, representative of FBOMS in the National Climate Change Fund. Since 1989, Rubens acts in the area of multilateral agreements and national policy on human and socioenvironmental rights, Counselor (since 2023) on the National Council on the Environment, and member of its technical chamber on climate justice. Civil engineer with specialization in environmental engineering, Doctor of Public and Environmental Health (São Paulo University), lawyer with post-graduate degree in constitutional law.

Silvio Sant’Ana, superintendent for the 2023-2025 term, is co-founder of Esquel and has been serving in various leadership positions in the foundation since 1989. Starting with the ICID 1992 – International Climate Variation and Sustainable Development Conference in Fortaleza, Silvio became one of Brazil’s recognized experts on public policy design of strategies for living with semiarid climate conditions and combating desertification. He played a strategic role in writing the proposal for the award-winning One Million Rainwater Harvesting Tanks program in semiarid Brazil, in founding the Semiarid Network ASA which managed the program and in writing Brazil’s first National Plan to Combat Desertification (2005). Effective organized civil society participation in promoting sustainable socioenvironmental development is Silvio’s other area of expertise: He played a lead role in designing Brazil’s legislation governing public interest organizations and the legislative framework governing relations between civil society organizations and the government — MROSC and continues his contribution to the MROSC platform. Master in rural development at Sorbonne University, Paris, Silvio worked for the Organization of American States, and acted as a consultant to the World Bank, Interamerican Bank and UNDP.