About David Plank
David Plank is Co-Director of the Lemann Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Brazilian Education. He served as Executive Director of Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) for 11 years, retiring in 2018. Before joining PACE Plank was a Professor at Michigan State University, where he founded and directed the Education Policy Center. He was previously on the faculties at the University of Pittsburgh and at the University of Texas at Dallas, where he taught courses and conducted research in the areas of educational finance and policy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1983. Plank is the author or editor of six books, including the AERA Handbook of Education Policy Research. He has published widely in a number of different fields, including economics of education, history of education, and educational policy. His current interests include the role of the State in education, and the relationship between academic research and public policy. In addition to his work in the United States, Plank has served as a consultant to international organizations including the World Bank, the United Nations Development Program, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States Agency for International Development, the Ford Foundation, and also to governments in Africa and Latin America.
About Adriano de Brito
Adriano de Brito began his professional career as a teacher at a Gymnasium, laying a solid foundation for a 30-year tenure as a professor of philosophy. In the academic realm, he dedicated himself to two primary research themes: the reference of singular terms to objects and moral normativity. Regarding the former, he formulated an original reference theory of proper names, a subject of interest to both philosophers and linguists. The fruits of this labor were documented in a book published in 2003. On the subject of morality, he consistently contributed to the field for the past two decades, offering an original perspective through the development of a strictly naturalistic conception of morality. This positioned him as one of the pioneers in Brazil, bridging the gap between moral philosophy and cognitive sciences. Between 1994 and 2003, he held the position of Philosophy Professor at Universidade Federal de Goiás (Federal University of Goiás⎯UFG, Brazil). From 2012 to 2016, he served as the Dean of the School of Humanities at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos, Brazil), where he had been engaged in teaching and research from 2004 to 2022. He held visiting professorships at Tübingen University (2003), the Facultad de Filosofia de la Universidad de Buenos Aires (2012), the Institute of Philosophy at the School of Advanced Study of the University of London (2013), and the Lemann Center, Graduate School of Education at Stanford University (2024). In the 2017-2020 quadrennium, he served as the secretary of education in the municipality of Porto Alegre, undertaking a comprehensive program of reforms aimed at enhancing primary education in the capital of Rio Grande do Sul. Additionally, he played a significant leadership role in philosophy, holding the position of vice president of the National Association of Graduate Studies in Philosophy and the Brazilian Society of Analytical Philosophy for two terms. Since 2008, he has been actively involved in corporate education, focusing on the role of ethics in leadership.
About José Francisco Soares
Professor José Francisco Soares has a PhD in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin - Madison and a postdoc in Education from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor. He is professor emeritus at the Federal University of Minas Gerais. As a result of his contributions in the field of educational assessment, he received the Bunge Foundation Special Award in 2012. From February 2014 to February 2016, he was President of INEP, the branch of the Brazilian Ministry of Education in charge of evaluating basic and higher education. He was a member of the National Council of Education, in which he was one of the rapporteurs of the National Curricular Common Core.
About Fernando Schüler
PhD in Philosophy from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) with a focus on political philosophy, Fernando Schuler is a university professor, columnist, consultant for companies and civil organizations in the areas of culture, political sciences, management, and the third sector. Between 2007 and 2010, he served as the Secretary of State for Justice and Social Development in Rio Grande do Sul. He was the Director of Ibmec in Rio de Janeiro, and he has been a Visiting Scholar at Columbia University. Currently, he holds the position of titular of the Cátedra Insper Palavra Aberta.
