Susana Cordeiro Guerra most recently served as President of the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) from 2019 to 2021. In this role, she led Brazil’s national statistical agency, responsible for the production of official statistics and the conduct of Brazil’s decennial census. In her role as President, Ms. Cordeiro Guerra oversaw an organization of approximately 12,000 spread throughout Brazil. During her tenure, she focused on reform of the Institute, preparation for the decennial Census, engagement with multilateral institutions, and adaptation during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms. Cordeiro Guerra led the Institute in adapting to the disruption imposed by the disease, implementing a remote work platform, structuring multiple work partnerships, and financing arrangements, digitalizing data collection, and launching new research surveys. Despite the challenges facing the Institute, IBGE was able to maintain its full statistical production during the pandemic and launched new research surveys, including PNAD-COVID, offering more accessible data and more frequent dissemination.

Prior to serving in the Brazilian government, Ms. Cordeiro Guerra served as an Economist at the World Bank, as well as in other roles at the Bank earlier in her career. In her work at the Bank, she focused on research and impact evaluation of projects in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Earlier in her career, she worked on decentralization reform in Tanzania and conducted field research and analysis on the impact of fiscal decentralization in service delivery in East Asia.

Ms. Cordeiro Guerra holds a PhD in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a Master’s in Public Administration and International Development from the Harvard Kennedy School, and an BA in Social Studies from Harvard University. Her publications include contributions to the World Bank’s flagship East Asia Decentralizes: Making Local Government Work and The Journal of Comparative Economics. She has also held professional and academic affiliations with the MIT Industrial Performance Center, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ), Institute for Applied Economic Research (IPEA), and Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV).