Brazilian, economist, Senior Forestry Officer and Team Leader of the Forest Governance and Economics Team in the Forestry Division of FAO. Work on forest socioeconomic contributions to the SDGs, cross-sectoral governance, forest value chains, bioeconomy, and economic instruments and finance to support forestry. Thais is focal point for SDG Indicator 15.2.1 and the FAO leader of the initiative “Sustainable Wood for a Sustainable World”, which articulates governance, economics, finance and scientific evidence to promote sustainable wood value chains and increase forest contributions to the SDGs and climate change objectives.
Thais career has a mix of experiences in finance, national policy-making and global environmental governance. Before joining FAO Forestry Department, Thais served as Senior Officer of the UN-REDD Programme Secretariat, directly in charge of the UN-REDD Global Programme, from 2011 to 2015. Her national policy-making experience comes from Brazil, where she served as Director of Climate Change of the Brazilian Ministry of Environment, and Director of the Brazilian Forest Service, having worked in the development and implementation of the Amazon Fund, the national Climate Change Fund, the Brazilian Climate Change Strategy and the Brazilian commitments to climate change mitigation. In the first phase of her career, Thais worked for 14 years at the Brazilian National Bank for Economic and Social Development, in several executive positions.
Thais holds an MSc in Environmental governance and regulation from the London School of Economics and Political Science – LSE.