[PODCAST] BOLD THINKERS EPISODE 3: Thriving on the Edge: São Paulo’s Path to Shared Prosperity
This 3rd episode of the HEC Bold Thinkers Podcast transports listeners to São Paulo, Brazil’s vibrant and complex megacity — a place where deep-rooted inequalities meet cutting-edge innovation, and where building bridges (literal and metaphorical) is key to a more inclusive, sustainable future.
Host Fatou Ndiaye guides us through four transformational opportunities emerging from São Paulo’s social, economic, and environmental landscape: confronting historical inequities, empowering microentrepreneurship, fostering inclusive innovation, and preparing for the future of work.
This episode features insights from three diverse experts shaping and studying São Paulo’s evolution:
- Carolina da Costa, Chief Impact and Sustainability Officer at fintech leader Stone, shares her vision for unlocking the untapped potential of over 5 million microentrepreneurs — emphasizing the need for financial inclusion, education, and community-driven innovation.
- Carlos Braga, Adjunct Professor at Fundação Dom Cabral and former senior economist at the World Bank, brings critical analysis on Brazil’s productivity challenges, the innovation ecosystem, and São Paulo’s role as a global leader in agritech and clean energy.
- Octavio de Barros, post-doctoral researcher at HEC Paris and São Paulo native, offers powerful perspectives on the city’s socio-spatial divides and why building “bridges” — between people, policies, and places — is essential for long-term transformation.
Together, they paint a rich portrait of São Paulo as both a city of contradictions and a laboratory for sustainability-focused development.
They explore São Paulo’s historical trajectory — from coffee-fueled growth to a multicultural metropolis — and its present-day challenges, including social segregation, urban mobility, and access to capital. But they also illuminate São Paulo’s strengths: its dynamic innovation sectors (fintech, agri-tech, health tech), its green energy infrastructure, and its deeply rooted entrepreneurial spirit.
The episode highlights how inclusive innovation, backed by smart policy and community-centered design, could unlock new economic and social opportunities — not just for Brazil, but for the world.
Key themes include:
- Rethinking urban inequality through physical and cultural connection
- Supporting informal microbusinesses as a development strategy
- Embracing green tech and sustainable agriculture
- Leveraging artificial intelligence to reimagine the future of education and work
🎙️ “The solutions lie in new lenses,” says host Fatou Ndiaye. In São Paulo, that means seeing across bridges — from center to periphery, from investor to microentrepreneur, from data to human development.
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TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Bold Thinkers,
I’m Fatou Ndiaye, and in this episode, we take you to the heart of yet another megacity which will inevitably be part of all futures: São Paulo.
The vibrant and modern city of São Paulo is the most populated city of Brazil and of South America. It thus ranks among the most populated and largest cities of the world.
The city itself has a population of 12 million people but its broader metropolitan area which includes innumerable and sprawling municipalities is the home to over 21 million people. Today this immense metropolitan area which is approximately 8100 square kms is more than 5 times larger than greater London and 136 times the size of Manhattan.
São Paulo is Brazil's economic powerhouse. It is nicknamed the ‘City of Cities’ or ‘Cidade das Cidades’. This reflects how impressive it is for its urban complexity, its vibrant arts scene, its unique cultural diversity and its economic opportunities…
You’re listening to 'Bold Thinkers', a podcast series dedicated to the voices from the places where critical sustainability issues are most pressing.
The objective of this podcast is to bring these voices to the forefront of the thinking, the planning, and the action of today’s leaders.
Each episode will explore a different megacity, meeting some of its trailblazers.
Today, we are going to explore São Paulo through different perspectives shared with us by three expert speakers:
- The business perspective will be brought to us by Carolina da Costa, the Chief Impact and Sustainability Officer at Stone, the Brazilian fintech leader.
- The academic point of view will be provided by Carlos Primo Braga. Carlos is an Adjunct Professor at Fundação Dom Cabral with special interests in international trade, macroeconomics, productivity and growth.
- And last but not least we will hear from Octavio de Barros, a São Paulo native and currently a post-doctoral research fellow at HEC Paris.
Fatou Ndiaye
In order to understand today’s mega city of São Paulo, including its social dynamics, its economic situation, its challenges and its opportunities, it is important to understand the city’s history…
SÃO PAULO'S ORIGINS
Fatou Ndiaye
Octavio, is particularly interested in corporate social responsibility and how organizational strategies shape stakeholder engagement and social value creation. He shares key perspectives on how São Paulo’s history contributed to it’s growth.
Octavio de Barros
This dates back to almost 200 years ago when coffee production became increasingly more important in the country. The whole world was in need of coffee, and São Paulo was producing it. The thing is that the city of São Paulo, which is part of the big state of São Paulo, so the city and the state have the same name, and this already says a lot. This city is located almost in the center of the state, meaning that it's the intermediator between the activities that happen in the interior in the countryside and what's happening in the coastline.
There were big plantations back then that were producing lots of coffee, but these had to be exported through the ports. São Paulo was geographically located in the middle of the way. This is basically why it became a very big commercial center, intermediating those two activities and attracting a lot of people as a consequence, since there was a lot of concentration of wealth, there were people coming from everywhere, from the country at first, but then coming from other countries as well as immigrants to leverage a little of that wealth that was concentrated.
Fatou Ndiaye
Brazil became one of the worlds largest coffee producers from the 1830s to the late 1880s. The wealth generated by the massive coffee exports transformed São Paulo and Brazil’s overall economy. It enabled the development of advanced infrastructure including railroads and ports which were essential to facilitate exportation of coffee and which contributed to the cities rapid economic development.
But this development did not come without a human cost.
While the massive coffee plantations were owned primarily by Portuguese and other immigrant settlers, the majority of the labor force were enslaved Africans who too often had to endure brutal conditions to ensure the coffee ‘industry’s profitability.
In 1888 Brazil finally abolished slavery. Although it was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery it did so without a lot of thought about ‘the after’ and how to integrate the ex-slaves into the rapidly developing economy.
Octavio, provides us with insightful details on the social divisions that ensued…
Octavio de Barros
The relationship between ex-slaves and the elite in São Paulo, and again, this is something that's very representative of the whole country, is basically that when we have this change in the law that now abolishes the possibility of being enslaved, there is no other consequence. There is no other planning of the policy to include those people. It's just, okay, from now on, it's not possible anymore to have a slave. It's not allowed by law. But that doesn't mean that those populations, those people that were enslaved back then, would be able to directly, indirectly integrate the society. There was a lot of stigma, of course, but besides that, there was no planning in terms of policy to include them.
Fatou Ndiaye
The aftermath of abolition in Brazil was marked by significant challenges for former slaves who faced social marginalization and persistent racial discrimination. As we heard, abolition did not come with provisions for land, financial assistance or job training and too many faced enormous economic hardship. The struggle for equality, social justice, political representation and recognition for their broad contributions are still very present today.
Following the abolition of slavery there was an influx of immigrants who came to the greater São Paulo to work on the coffee farms but also to contribute in very different ways to the rapidly growing - and increasingly dynamic city of São Paulo.
Octavio explains further.
Octavio de Barros
São Paulo is very multicultural because of the immigrants that came here. Part of it is related to the slaves that were part of the agri-businesses that we had in the countryside and who came to the urban center after a while. But most of it comes from immigrants that are coming from other countries. Of course, many Portuguese people, those are the colonizers of Brazil. So Portuguese people were always connected to São Paulo. But in the 20th century, it was not only the Portuguese immigrants that were coming. We also had many Italian people coming. We also have a part of the city that was composed Spanish and German immigrants coming. This leading to specific neighborhoods that are focused on those populations.
Fatou Ndiaye
Carlos Braga is an Adjunct Professor at Fundação Dom Cabral. He has held different executive & advisory roles at the World Bank, including as Director of Economic Policy and Debt, and was also a professor at the University of São Paulo and at IMD, Switzerland. He provided more details and surprising perspectives.
Carlos Braga
The great São Paulo has roughly 6 million people that are, let's say, have Italian ancestry, so much more than the city of Rome, for instance. It has 3 million of Portuguese ancestry, 1. 7 million are African ancestry, and the 1 million, Arabic, and close to 700,000 Japanese.
Fatou Ndiaye
It is not surprising that São Paulo also has another ‘nickname’ > a cidade dos Imigrantes the city of Immigrants reflecting its rich history of migration and cultural diversity. This rich tapestry of cultures continues to define & shape São Paulo today.
Opportunity #1: Bridging the social divides
Fatou Ndiaye
While the mega city of São Paulo is a center of wealth and opportunity it also grapples with significant poverty and marginalization. This rich-poor dichotomy is reflected in the city’s organization & layout. As opposed to Mumbai's east-west divide, São Paulo could roughly be described as a combination of concentric and radial patterns. The affluent heart of the city is characterized by a modern grid layout, modern skyscrapers, iconic large avenues, bustling sidewalks and a very dynamic atmosphere. Surrounding this central business district, are an enormous sequence of different socio-economic neighbourhoods. Generally, the wealthier neighbourhoods are closer to the center, while the lower income areas including the favelas - Brazils informal settlements - are further out.
Octavio de Barros
We're talking about a very interesting composition in which you have a huge part of the city that's living in urban slams, mostly in the periphery, that are going to have a very hard time into getting to the city center to work during the day. We can consider almost four hours of transportation of commute every day for those people to get into the city. On the other hand, you're going to have less than 5% of the population that are concentrating most of the wealth who are working and leaving in the city center basically in the financial and commercial center of São Paulo, who live a completely different life.
If they don't look outside of the a car window, they're not going to see the harsh reality that's present. They can live inside of a bubble if they choose to. But also if they just open the window and look outside to what's going on, they're going to notice that in the middle of the way between the financial centers and their homes, they're probably going through a very poor neighborhood.
But if you're living in that neighborhood and you walk in a straight line in any direction for one mile, you're probably going to be reaching a poor neighborhood, if not a favela, a urban slum. So geographically, those people are people that are very close, people that are very rich and very poor, they're very close. But if you live inside of this corridor in São Paulo that connects the wealthiest neighborhoods and the financial and the financial sectors, you can go from one to the other without seeing what's happening elsewhere.
Fatou Ndiaye
Octavio continues by describing the interesting - and much needed - concept of building physical and figurative bridges between the elite and the marginalized populations of São Paulo.
Octavio de Barros
What we're calling that in the case of São Paulo, are initiatives that are building bridges. I think this is an interesting metaphor because most of the periphery of São Paulo is going to be outside of the main bridges. They're going to be out of the main center. The center is very small, very concentrated, and that's where the commercial and the financial sector are going to be concentrated at. Many people are coming from everywhere outside of this small center to work there every day and to do that, they're crossing the bridges, physically speaking. It's not only something that they're doing in terms of a cultural connect, it's also the geographic location of people living in São Paulo. There are some very interesting initiatives that are focused on trying to connect what's happening inside of the center of the city with what's happening outside of the bridges. That's why we can think about this metaphor happening geographically and culturally at the same time.
The outcome is that many times you create opportunities for people that are living inside of the smallest bubble to learn about the harsh reality of the rest of the city, but also to learn that there are many innovations, many opportunities, and a lot of knowledge that's in the hands of the people that are living outside. They may not have the same access to formal education. They may not have the same access to wealth as people in the city center, but they are living their life somehow, and it's not an easy life. These people are facing several barriers, and still they're thriving, they're finding a way to continue and find new solutions. These initiatives that try to connect those two sides of the bridge they tend to be quite successful.
Fatou Ndiaye
Clearly, innovation in São Paulo could reach a whole new level if it intentionally focused on further addressing the growing needs of the underserved.
The opportunities for creating incremental value, both directly & indirectly, are enormous. Because prosperity drives down crime, it unlocks opportunities, and it creates a gravitational pull for even more investments…It creates virtuous social & economic cycle. Global innovators and investors - especially those interested in building a sustainable future - should be more focused on this!
Octavio closes by sharing a very personal note
Octavio de Barros
I was born across the bridge in São Paulo, and for 30 years in my life, I lived across the bridge. But at some point, I had the opportunity to connect a little bit more with people that were leaving their life in the biggest center in the top business goals in the city. The thing is that for a long time, I felt like that was a big challenge to actually connect with those very different people and learn about their worldview and the language that they used. I think that completely shaped all of my decisions since then. Once I understood that instead of going for a traditional economist life, I decided to become a social entrepreneur. Then I pursued a PhD in business where I could look at organizations and the society trying to mix.
This was completely shaped by the way that São Paulo allowed me to see the world and by those connections that I built. This is something that I wish everyone could have access to.
Opportunity #2 : the vibrant innovation ecosystem
Fatou Ndiaye
Despite the social divisions and the untapped opportunities for inclusion, São Paulo is also recognized globally as a uniquely vibrant hub of innovation in several sectors including fin-tech, agri-tech & health tech. These sectors have grown exponentially by tapping into Brazils natural resources, access to large consumer markets and massive investments.
Carlos Braga, who has studied this transformational phenomenon from different points of view shares more details on São Paulo’s diverse innovation ecosystem.
Carlos Braga
São Paulo represents the city itself, something like 10% of Brazilian GDP. The great São Paulo represents close to 20% of Brazilian GDP. It's one of the wealthiest regions in the country. The income per capita of the city of São Paulo is something like $15,000, so 50% above the income per capita for the country as a whole. It's also a city that concentrates the headquarters of the major multinational corporations in Brazil. It's also a center of innovation. São Paulo is considered the fourth leading city in terms of FinTech development in the world, being below only cities like San Francisco, London, and New York. In overall terms, with respect to innovation, São Paulo typically stands among the 20 major centers for innovation.
Well, Brazil has always been independently of technology, a major magnet for foreign direct investment. Typically, Brazil is always ranked among the 10 major countries in terms of attracting foreign direct investment. And typically, over the in the last few years has been around $70 billion per year.
Fatou Ndiaye
Brazil is a global leader in agricultural production.
To put this in perspective, today it is estimated to meet over 70% of its food needs domestically… And currently in early 2025? it is also the main food supplier for China, alongside the United States of America!
As a result, there is a growing movement towards more sustainable farming and regenerative practices. This is increasingly becoming ‘a must’ in order to balance productivity and environmental conservation. The Agritech sector is thus very advanced in Brazil often piloted by investors & innovators via São Paulo.
Carlos Braga
That is fundamental for a country to make this transition, exactly to invest in innovation. In the case of Brazil, there is one area that has been very has observed significant progress in the last few decades. This is the agribusiness. As you probably know, nowadays, Brazil is a powerhouse in terms of production of almost all commodities, be it soja beans, be it cotton, be it corn, and of course, coffee. But this process, of course, is not only happening in the state of São Paulo. In reality, reflects the expansion of the agricultural frontier in Brazil in areas of the so-called cerrado, which is the equivalent of the African savanas.
These were areas that 40, 50 years ago, people believe that were not appropriate for agriculture. But it was exactly by investing in research and development that Brazil was able to develop plant varieties that were adequate for this type of soil. And nowadays, we have productivity in agriculture similar to the American Midwest for products like soya beans. And São Paulo has played an important role through its universities in this process.
Fatou Ndiaye
Carlos also briefly touches on the fact that Brasil is increasingly considered a ‘green powerhouse’ on the global stage.
Carlos Braga
One thing that over the last few years, it's beginning to become an important important aspect of attractiveness in terms of Brazil is the fact that Brazil, the country as a whole, is investing a lot in renewable energy.
Brazil has one of the cleanest energy matrices in the world in terms of generation of electricity and power in general. We rely mainly on hydropower. We use a lot of biofuel like ethanol. In this context, Brazil is becoming an attractive place for the installation of data centers because of the characteristics of having a clean energy matrix.
Fatou Ndiaye
Brazil hydropower plants generate between 60 - 70% of its energy needs. These plants harness the power of the countries extensive river systems and thus significantly help Brazil reduce its carbon footprint. But this also comes with negative impacts, including major ecosystem disruptions and the displacement of local communities.
Therefore innovators in São Paulo - and beyond - will need to further consider longitudinal & systemic value creation. For example, engaging impacted communities upfront and leveraging AI & biomimitism to optimize water flows. These are surely some of the topics that will be discussed at COP30 which will be held in the northwest of Brazil in November of this year…
Opportunity #3: Micro Entrepreneurship & Access to Capital
Fatou Ndiaye
The enormous influx of venture capital has led to the burgeoning of a very sophisticated start-up ecosystem in São Paulo. However despite being one of the largest economies of Latin America and both a green & innovation hub, Brazil continues to face significant challenges in addressing its poverty & inequalities.
This is where the services of Stone, a leading fintech, come in.
Carolina da Costa, has had a unique & impressive professional journey spanning from Academia as undergraduate Dean at INSPER, to several innovation roles to her most recent role as the Chief Impact and Sustainability Officer at Stone, the Brazilian fintech leader.
She shed light on the opportunities that exist in Brazil’s major microentrepreneur space.
Carolina da Costa
When we talk about GDP per capita, São Paulo is 50% above the rest of the nation, which, of course, express the wealthy that actually circulates. You have our financial districts here, technological districts here. But you can also have income per capita in rich areas 16 times greater than in peripheral areas. Workers in peripheral areas usually spend up to three hours in daily commuting to wealthier regions to work.
You have about 31% of informal jobs which lack labor rights and social protection. Currently, we have over 5 million microentrepreneurships in the state of São Paulo.
For example, the venture capital type of entrepreneurship at high scale up is mostly concentrated in high-educated individuals who had the opportunity to study or to have a very strong technological background. Then actually contrasts with the micro-entrepreneurship in the peripheral areas that is often informal. Work is usually like the entrepreneurs have to struggle to obtain financing and grow their businesses. There's a lot of volatility as well. They face high interest rates and bureaucracy every time they have to access financial institutions for funding. I'm talking about in the state of São Paulo, as I said, 5 million people going through microentrepreneurship as a way to survive and have some income generation. These people usually don't have education.
Usually, I'm going to say these microentrepreneurs have income generation through their business around... It can go from $100 to $5,000 in general. Usually, they're not concerned about growth. They are much more concerned about stability because income can be very volatile in the sense that sometimes they earn, sometimes they don't. Depends on a lot of macroeconomic context. You have usually food activities, also mostly food, clothing, and other services such as hairdressers and and activities like that.
Fatou Ndiaye
Carolina explains some the misconceptions that too many financial institutions have about microentrepreneurs.
Carolina da Costa
These people, usually, they actually mix personal finance with the business finance. Is it wrong to assume they don't know anything about financial education because they really have to struggle with the income they earn. They have ways to actually survive. I like to mention, I don't know if you had the to read that wonderful book called ‘The Portfolio of the Poor’ by Collins. It was a 2009 book, and the authors were Collins, Mordech, Hutterford, and Huth They discuss, of course, the very poor in the world, but they have a very interesting thesis that actually show when they were actually following these people and even helping them to do the balance sheet. They actually found out that these people has a lot of mechanisms, including community mechanisms, for they help each other.
Community is a very important piece of this ethos of microentrepreneurship in peripheral areas. They have to actually help each other in the sense that they can reference each other for financing, they can exchange sometimes tools. They actually can sell their service from themselves, among themselves. So community is a very important part of this context of microentrepreneurship, not only in São Paulo, but throughout the world.
I think one of the greatest pain is access to capital. You have nonprofit providers and you have for-profit providers. What are the difference between the two? The nonprofit providers of capital, sometimes microcredit, they depend a lot on funding, and that's the reason they cannot scale up in a relevant fashion. Then you have the more traditional providers, like for profit, like banks. These providers very rarely have services for the base of the pyramid, with the exception a big commercial bank in Brazil that is more targeted to this population, most of the traditional banks, they are more into small to medium businesses because of less risk. Then you have a lot of finTechs that have actually arised in Brazil, especially…
Fatou Ndiaye
Carolina proceeds to explain how significant the untapped needs are. The potential economic upside of empowering millions of potential micro-entrepreneurs with affordable, useful & complementary financial services is mind boggling… But it requires truly understanding the voice of the customer, having foresight and being ready to build complementary offerings.
Carolina da Costa
I think the whole thing is the issue of how players can position themselves in this population in a way that because they are for profit, they can survive, but at the same time offering a service that is affordable and is useful for the type of needs that this population have, as I said, they need much more than just cash.
Fatou Ndiaye
Carolina goes on to explain how Stone has quantified the impact that its services are having on individuals but also on communities.
Carolina da Costa
We did an impact study about two years ago in which we noticed that places where stone was, for the last five years improved the developmental human factor, The places where Stone was, It improved this KPI in 20% within five years. What it shows, of course, there's no causality, but it's a correlation of factor that shows that the existence of providers of this type of service make the whole city to develop, the whole region to develop, because you bring consumption, you bring people to commercialize goods and services, and you bring the possibility to have money up front for them to make investments or even to survive as a business. That's the whole mechanism that creates income and local development that is within this digital financial infrastructure.
Fatou Ndiaye
Carolina shared a beautiful vision for how to enable the city of São Paulo and the greater Brazil to prosper.
Carolina da Costa
Definitely…I think we have to support and sustain microentrepreneurship. This is a serious matter. It does not just give them money. It's really a deep dive on their way of living and how can we really get these people to thrive with a combination of access to capital, education, and community development. There's no excuse because nowadays we have technology on our side, we have a digitalization, we have access to data. We have to have the desire and the drive to really create products and new markets for these people to participate in. This is my dream to have more people able to, those who want, of course, be able to thrive through entrepreneurship.
OPPORTUNITY #4 : Rethinking the future of work
Fatou Ndiaye
The future of work in Brazil will inevitably be increasingly dynamic. And it will be characterized by technology, shifting labor dynamics and a growing focus on inclusion & sustainability.
Carlos shared important context to understand the current situation in Brazil and how it is rapidly evolving.
Carolina da Costa
Well, as you know, Brazil was one of the few countries that between 1950 and 1980 grew on a sustained base above 7. 5% per year. Only Japan was growing faster than Brazil during this period. Since the 1980s, however, the Brazilian economy has been growing at a mediocre pace. When we talk about growth of GDP, the growth of GDP, by definition, reflects the expansion of the labor force and the growth of productivity of labor.
Between 1950 and 1979, the Brazilian labor productivity grew around 4% per year. Since 1980, up to now, it has been growing below 1% per year. This is the big challenge. How do you improve labor productivity? Well, you have to create better conditions for investment in capital. You have, of course, to increase investments in human capital, This is the big challenge for most middle income countries.
On top of that, we have still a very fragmented educational system with some islands of excellency, like the University of São Paulo, but overall, still lots need to be done. Here again, technology can help in this process, the use of artificial intelligence, be it in the private sector, be it in the educational system can leverage significantly the process of education in all countries, and particularly in a developing country like Brazil.
One system that is very progressive in the use of artificial intelligence is the so-called SENAI, which is the Service for the Development of the Industrial Sector. They have schools, technical schools for training.
In this context, they are relatively advanced in the use of artificial intelligence. They are also using artificial intelligence to evaluate what is the situation of the labor market in different areas of not only the city, but the state of São Paulo. In this context, they can identify what jobs are with significant demand which is not being fulfilled by the market, and then to orient their educational processes in the region and through the technical schools to try to generate people with the required skills. This is still, let's say, a nearly stage in this process.
Fatou Ndiaye
Carlos mentioned a study by Goldman Sachs that predicts that up to 20% of the tasks in Brazils labor market could be impacted and eventually replaced by artificial intelligence. I asked if there is room for exploring alternative economic models as we think about the future of work…
Carlos Braga
If you assume that artificial intelligence and related technologies are going to generate major disruptions in the labor market, definitely, societies are going to explore possibilities like a universal basic income. There are experiments, be it in Finland, be it in Alaska, about universal basic income that require attention and that we could learn from these experiences. The basic point here is that more and more, all societies will be considering not only the GDP growth, but it will be paying attention to the quality of this growth, be it in terms of environmental implications, be it in terms of, let's say, happiness of the society. And I would argue that those societies that are able to explore in a more efficient manner, total factor productivity….
Fatou Ndiaye
Carlos went on to share that there is a clear vision for a more sustainable & inclusive future of Brazil - including a very strategic - initiative named IMAGINE BRAZIL.
Carlos Braga
Well, Imagine Brazil is an initiative that was, let's say, driven by the interests of the board of the Fundação Don Cabral, exactly to address the major challenges that the Brazilian economy and society face at this point in time. The imagine Brazil initiative is analyzing, looking mainly at four areas. One is exactly the question of growth and productivity that I'm directly involved. Another is associated with the question of education, and particularly the education in the primary and secondary sectors in Brazil, how to improve the quality of education. The other focuses on issues of the environment, particularly the question of sanitation, which is still is a major challenge in Brazil.
Last but not the least, question of governance in terms of the public sector, how to improve the quality of policies in the context of the actions of the different ministries in Brazil and the different areas of the federation. […] it will take time to be implemented. And no doubt this is one of the areas that we have to follow closely if we are going to have a more dynamic environment for the private sector in the country.
Carlos Braga
People always ask me why I came back to Brazil after almost 30 years out of the country. The reasons are threefold, of course, family reasons. The question that it is a country with many challenges, but also many opportunities, and last but not least, to be able to attend or to assist all the my soccer team, Botafogo, who was the Brazilian champion last year and also the champion of the main context in South America, the Libertadores de América. Let's hope that all these trends evolve well in 2025.
Fatou Ndiaye
Of course we couldn't end this episode without mentioning the beautiful warm passion of the Brazilian people, their music, their cultural traditions, and of course football which holds a special place in many Brazilians hearts!
Our journey through Sao Paolo comes to a close…
I hope that the insights and perspectives shared by our guests have allowed you to learn about how the megacity of São Paulo is leading the way on so many fronts… Green innovation, agricultural innovation, financial innovation, true inclusion of micro-entrepreneurs and much more. It is a city which is not only transforming itself but also helping to shape Brasils future in a rapidly changing global landscape.
No one is equipped to address the new world challenges being faced in Sao Paolo.
Neither the best CEOs in the world, nor the world’s best academics, nor the best scientists. But what we’ve learned from Carolina, Carlos and Octavio is that the solutions may lie in understanding the challenges through new lenses.
Thank you for joining us on this journey through Sao Paolo.
Stay tuned for our next episode of Bold Thinkers, where we continue to explore the voices of megacities that will be a critical part of our collective future.
For more information on the HEC Paris Impact company Lab, or if you are interested in collaborating with us on learning, testing & scaling impact solutions in the megacities of the global south, please visit us online or contact us at impactcompanylab@hec.fr
Thank you