Impact

To drive immediate improvements to Brazil’s leadership infrastructure, we have collaborated with some of the world’s most storied colleges and universities to create scholarships and research fellowships for young, civic-minded Brazilians.

Some of Brazil’s brightest future leaders are currently completing Lemann Fellowships at Columbia University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Oxford, the University of Southern California, and Yale University.

In an effort to promote racial equality — an essential component of addressing Brazil’s staggering economic inequality — the Lemann Foundation has partnered with EducationUSA and Voxy to create Ponte de Talentos, a program that helps low-income Afro-Brazilian and indigenous students pursue postgraduate degrees in the United States. We also offer full scholarships for Afro-Brazilian postgraduate students through partnerships with the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Baobá Fund. And in the newest phase of our longstanding global partnership with the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Brazilians from underprivileged backgrounds accepted to the university will have 100 percent of their tuition and living expenses covered. The young leaders study subjects such as education, public health, and public administration so they can return to Brazil equipped with the skills to drive meaningful social change at scale.

Through these programs and public sector knowledge exchange programs like the Education Talent Network and the Health Talent Network, we have supported over 700 young Brazilian leaders, including more than 100 who currently work in the public sector and seven who were elected to statewide or national office in 2018.