I'm a Brazilian journalist currently working as an investigative reporter for Mongabay and as a fellow of the Pulitzer Center's Rainforest Investigations Network. It's impossible to separate my environmental career from the SEJ: a well-timed reporting grant was a milestone in my shift to environmental reporting.
The SEJ financed my first trip to the Amazon in 2016 where I co-authored six environmental stories with a Canadian journalist for the Thomson Reuters Foundation (TRF). Soon after, I became TRF's environmental correspondent. The SEJ literally helped me to get this job!
Another highlight from this trip was my investigation about “Pirates in the Amazon,” which uncovered the high incidence of diesel oil theft on cargo ferries on Amazon rivers. Published in O Estado de S. Paulo newspaper, it won three top Brazilian journalism awards.
In 2017 I won a fellowship to attend the SEJ conference in Pittsburgh, which allowed me to share my experience on an environmental crime panel. I clearly remember the attendees' high interest in Brazil and cross-border collaborations.
In 2020 an article and a documentary film I co-directed and co-produced with a British filmmaker about Indigenous Guajajara risking their lives against illegal loggers in the Amazon won four awards, including SEJ Best Explanatory Reporting.
In 2022 my Mongabay investigation revealing deforestation and water contamination from palm oil companies in the Amazon won second place in SEJ's investigative journalism reporting and third place in the Fetisov Journalism Awards.
This February I won the SEAL Journalism Environmental Award with distinction for my “powerful work covering the continued encroachment of global corporations into Indigenous Amazon lands.”
This year I was a speaker at the biodiversity workshop in Boise thanks to a diversity fellowship. The conference was terrific but it lacked international journalists. SEJ members discussed diversification during breakfast with the board. After I spoke, members urged me to work to shift the SEJ globally.
We cannot have the SEJ focused primarily on the US. We urgently need to increase the number of international members. I'm in a strategic position to drive this change: Mongabay has staff and freelancers worldwide and I'm part of valuable networks with journalists from all over the world as a Pulitzer and Oxford Climate Journalism Network fellow.
Environmental and climate coverage are the most urgent issues of our time. Knowledge exchange and cooperation between journalists worldwide are key to ensure excellence in environmental reporting. We have a mission to prepare journalists to cover environmental themes worldwide, which will also create opportunities for international collaboration. Expanding SEJ's global influence is one of the best approaches to make this happen.
I'm certain that now is the perfect time to run for a board position to pay back the benefits I received from the SEJ and to help journalists overseas. I'm truly confident that my broad experience and high profile network will help SEJ expand internationally, and I'm eager to raise funds to bring more international journalists to SEJ.
Advertisement 
