Mr. Guedes oversaw one of the world’s largest economies during the most challenging time of the Great Pandemic and Ukraine war, deploying structural reforms and highly effective public policies against supply chain disruptions and demand collapse. Together, these structural reforms and emergency measures delivered higher economic growth coupled with a lower inflation rate than most G20 countries, all while attaining fiscal balance and reducing debt to GDP ratio to lower pre-pandemic levels.

Structural reforms spearheaded by Paulo Guedes include Social Security, privatizations, Central Bank independence, new regulatory frameworks for Sanitation, Oil & Natural Gas, Cabotage, Green Energy Transition, International Tax Treaties, Mercosul Proposal for European Union agreement and Brazil’s advance on OECD accession. Emergency public policies to mitigate poverty, unemployment and economic shutdown during the pandemic and Ukraine war include highly successful minimum income emergency transfers, job preservation grants and sector credit programs.

Brazil also reached further international relevance under Mr. Guedes’s leadership, having appointed Brazilians as heads of the two most important regional banks of the world, IDB and NDB for the first time in the country’s history.

Paulo Guedes holds a PhD in Economics from University of Chicago and has earned a very distinguished career as an entrepreneur in both, Brazil’s financial markets, as well as the country’s education sector prior to his public service.

Mr. Guedes was co-founder of Banco Pactual, Brazil’s largest investment bank, and JGP Hedge Fund, one of the first in the country. He was the founder, chairman and CEO of BR Investimentos (later Bozano Investimentos, currently Crescera Private Equity, specialist in Education and Health).

Mr. Guedes is a former professor at the Vargas Foundation, Catholic University and Applied and Pure Mathematics Institute. He was also the founder, CEO and majority shareholder of IBMEC, a network of leading Business Schools, well known for the innovations introduced in the Education sector. He pioneered Executive MBAs in Brazil, founded the K-12 network Abril Education and a collection of Medical Schools currently listed at the NASDAQ as Afya. He was also Advisor on some of the country’s largest IPOs including K-12 SEB and higher-education institution, Anima.

Paulo Guedes was a founder of Millenium Institute, a think tank to stand for democracy, the rule of law and a market economy in Brazil. For over 30 years prior to his role in the public sector, Mr. Guedes contributed opinion articles on the topics of economics and politics to the country’s most influential newspapers (Folha de São Paulo, O Globo) and magazines (Exame, Época).