FOUNDER

Oi! My name is Manuela, I’m a Brazilian-American passionate about accelerating the transition to a sustainable and circular economy as an investor, entrepreneur, and educator. For the past year, while exploring a new business I had the honor to co-found and lead Ethical Creators (previously modeDurable), a sustainable fashion fellowship that trains fashion, beauty, and lifestyle media to confidently cover environmental issues.
I’m a serial entrepreneur and just launched my third company, Automated Water Machines, delivering convenient, quality drinking water with zero waste. In addition to investing the past ~3 years, I’ve advised Pentatonic on their strategy to transform post-consumer materials and supply chain surplus into high performance, luxurious solutions for the world’s largest companies and most influential brands. I’m also proud to sit on the Governing Board of the Metcalf Institute, which trains journalists in science to confidently and accurately cover climate change, having been a participant myself over a decade ago when I was reporting for Newsweek in Beijing. 
Previously, I worked at Palantir Technologies focused on international business development in new markets. My start as an entrepreneur began in Beijing where I first helped Newsweek launch its first blog (remember those days?), then realized the opportunity in digital business intelligence. I started an agritech subscription service called Smart Ag Analytics; this evolved into an online marketplace for smallholder farmers, now called InstaAgro, focused on selling agricultural inputs in Brazil. 
The first part of my career was a cleantech correspondent. I spent nearly a decade living in China starting with a Princeton-in-Asia Fellowship in 2007. I just received my MBA from MIT, earned a MSc from Oxford, and my BA from Harvard. I’m obsessed with languages and in addition to English, speak Mandarin, Portuguese, and Spanish.