Lais de Figueiredo Lopes
Board of Directors
Based in Brasilia since early 2012, Ms. Lopes has been serving as a special adviser to the Minister of the General-Secretariat of the Presidency of Brazil, coordinating a project to reform Brazilian laws and regulations concerning civil society organizations and their relations to the government. In such capacity, she has been working alongside the Government's staff, in permanent dialogue with civil society organizations, seeking to identify and develop the most relevant guidelines to generate knowledge and future improvements of the nonprofit sector in Brazil.Ms. Lopes is an attorney who has long been focusing on the nonprofit sector and was a former partner in a law firm specialized in assisting civil society organizations in São Paulo. She holds a master’s of Law degree from the São Paulo Catholic University School of Law (Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo), where she has also been a lecturer in the graduate program of Master in Business Administration focused on Civil Society Organizations, as well as in the National Service for Commercial and Regional Administration of the State of São Paulo (Senac), on the disciplines "Law Applicable for Third Sector" and "Humans Rights and Public Policies."
She is a co-author of the Brazil Note for the USIG project and served as the Chairman of the Third Sector and Social Movements Committee of the Federal Council of the Brazilian Bar Association. Ms. Lopes has also co-authored several books on the third sector in general, including: Third Sector - Controversial Topics I and II, Dictionary of Democratic Management, and People in Brazil - A Complete Approach of Their Rights. She is also a member of the Center for Third Sector Advanced Studies and of the International Society for Third Sector Research.
Ms. Lopes is also an expert on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, having participated in several sessions of the UN Special Committee in charge of drafting the convention. She was Vice-Chairman of the Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities of the Federal Council of the Brazilian Bar Association and the Counselor representing the Federal Bar Association at the National Council for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.