Mirella’s guiding principle in life has been that everyone can be a changemaker. A Brazilian journalist by training, Mirella has created multiple ventures in her home country as well as outside Brazil. While she lived in Mozambique, she created a citizenship course for primary school children so that they could know their rights and act upon them to create change at their schools. Inspired by her work on reporting elections in Africa for global news media channels, she co-founded Minibus Media, a participatory journalism initiative for local citizens to produce and share their own news. The first group of independent young journalists in Angola has been created thanks to her work, which continues today. As an intrapreneur, Mirella has worked for the main media outlets in Brazil and for several citizen organizations, including Conservation International, Oxfam, Red Cross, Omunga, and Ashoka Fellow organization Redes da Maré. More recently, she led the Brazil branch of Ashoka Fellow organization streetfootballworld. Mirella holds an MA in International Relations and Development Studies, an MBA in Entrepreneurship and Business Management and an MBA in Human Resources Development. She is the co-author of the book “Hip Hop – A periferia grita” (Hip Hop – the ghettos rap at you) and is a member of the Civil Society Advisory Group for UN Women in Brazil. From 2017 to 2018, she worked for Ashoka Brazil, leading the team in the country. Since March 2019, she is the CEO of Instituto Dara, the NGO number 1 in terms of social impact in Latin America and 21st in the world.
