Carla de Paiva Bezerra

General Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic of Brazil | Brasília, Brazil

Carla has worked as a practitioner and a scholar on participatory democracy in Brazil. She is a member of the federal civil service as a specialist in public policy and government management, with more than 12 years of experience in the public sector. Currently, she is serving as Director of Digital Participation and Network Communication at the General Secretariat of the Brazilian Presidency of the Republic, being responsible for the Brasil Participativo Platform.

Carla received her PhD in Political Science from the University of São Paulo (USP) and a Bachelor of Law from the University of Brasília (UnB). Previously, she has worked in different agencies such as the Government Transition Cabinet, the Secretariat for the Promotion of Racial Equality and the Secretariat of Management of the Government of the State of São Paulo. She launched the Youth Participatory Observatory (Awarded for best public interest content site in 2014) and the general coordination of the 3rd. National Youth Conference (2015).

As a researcher, Carla has worked at IPEA (Institute for Economic Applied Research), a think tank of the Brazilian government, where she coordinated the Civil Society Organizations Map. She is also a collaborating researcher at the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning (Cebrap) and a visiting researcher at the University of California at Berkeley. Her research interests include democracy, participation, public policies and institutional change in Brazil and Latin America. She has articles published in Brazilian and international journals such as Critical Policy Studies, Brazilian Political Science Review, Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais and Georgetown Journal of International Affairs.