English

She is a lawyer, the first indigenous woman to practice law in Brazil, and also the first indigenous woman to be elected a federal deputy in Brazil (2019-2023). She is the current president of FUNAI (National Foundation for Indigenous Peoples).

First black and transgender federal deputy elected in Brazil’s history, she was the most voted councillor in the country in 2020. For two years she was the president of the Human Rights Commission of the São Paulo City Council.

Brazilian educator, artist and politician. In 2018, she was elected state deputy for São Paulo, becoming the first transgender woman in the Parliament of the state São Paulo.

Black woman, solo mother, shellfish gatherer, fisherwoman and quilombola from the Maré Island, in Salvador. An activist in the fishing movement for over 20 years, she fights in defense of black people, the environmental and the buen vivir (well living).

Honorary President of the National Federation of Domestic Workers. She was the first union leader in this category to be honored with the title of Doctor Honoris Causa in Brazil by the Federal University of Bahia.

Brazilian psychologist and activist, director of the Center for the Study of Labor Relations and Inequalities (CEERT), which works to reduce racial and gender inequalities in the workplace. In 2015, she was named one of the 50 world’s most influential people in the area of diversity by The Economist magazine.

Ialorixá (priestess and leader in the Candomblé religion), matriarch of the Pitanga dos Palmares quilombo (quilombos are groups of black people formed by the remnant societies of former enslaved people) and former Secretary of Policies for the Promotion of Racial Equality in Simões Filho, Bahia. She had been denouncing the threats she received and the persecution of quilombolas (inhabitants of a quilombo), and was shot dead on August 17, 2023.

Historian, teacher, screenwriter, poet and activist for human rights of black people and women. She was one of the country’s leading intellectuals, with fundamental contributions to understanding black identity as an instrument of self-affirmation.