He joined the United Nation as an Information Officer in New York and Addis Ababa (1965-67) and the FAO as Regional Information Advisor for Africa and Communication Advisor (1967-73), where he became Director of the Information Division (1974-76). In 1978 he co-founded The Al-Mouhit Cultural Association (presently the Assilah Forum Foundation) a non-governmental, non-profit organization dedicated to social and economic development through cultural and art exchange.
Before joining IPSS, she was the Managing Director of the Mandela Institute for Development Studies (MINDS). Prior to joining MINDS, between 1999 and 2011, she consecutively headed several African and international organizations as Executive Director of Greenpeace Africa, CEO of the African Institute for Corporate Citizenship (AICC), Founder and Manager of Africa Projects for Akena Research and Consulting and Regional Director of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters.
In 1994, he joined the International Energy Agency in Paris as a senior international staffer. From 2005 to 2011, he was Director for British Gas (BG) Group, now part of Shell, in London, managing high-level government engagements in support of the company’s global assets and new business development. He served as the chairman of International Advisory Board for Invensys plc, a FTSE 100 technology company, and helped win several high-profile contracts.
Minister of Foreign Affairs (1999-2004), then elected first woman president of a private bank, Banco Salvadoreño and Banistmo. She forged a strategic alliance and was elected CEO, keeping this position even when HSBC acquired a controlling majority in 2006. She pioneered a new function in the region becoming Corporate Sustainability Head for HSBC Latin America (2007-15). When she witnessed the number of elderly clients in the Bank who could not read or write, she helped launch a national literacy campaign and became member of the Consejo Ejecutivo del Trienio de la Alfabetización.
From 2014 to 2018 he was Director of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs, focusing on current foreign and security policy issues. From 1999 to 2014 he was in the senior leadership of the World Bank, first as Vice President of External and UN Affairs, then for twelve years in country and regional operations in West Africa, Maghreb and the Mediterranean region.
He was president of the Sao Paulo Directorate of the Progressive Party, having run for vice governor of the State of Sao Paulo in 2010, where his party polled in third place with more than 1.2 million votes. He also served as the Administrative Director of the Sao Paulo Metropolitan Housing Company until December 2015.Early in 2017, Mr. De Freitas, was a Visiting Fellow of Practice at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.
He has occupied several leadership positions at the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GFATM) in Geneva (Switzerland), at the International Planned Parenthood Federation Regional Office in Nairobi (Kenya) and in his own country (Senegal) where he was instrumental in the development, management and monitoring of the country’s Public Investment Programs for over a decade. He has Master Degrees in Economics and Development Planning, and in Public Policy from the American University (Washington, DC).
Among his recent works feature “The Formation of economic history in Brazil: from the South Atlantic to South America”, in F. Boldizzoni and Pat Hudson, Routledge Handbook of Global Economic History, 2016 ; “The African Slave Trade and the Construction of the Iberian Atlantic”, in Kerry Bystrom and Joseph R. Slaughter (eds.) ; The Global South Atlantic, 2017 ; The Trade in the Living - The Formation of Brazil in the South Atlantic, Sixteenth to Seventeenth Centuries (US edition, 2018). He holds a Ph.D. in History at the Université Paris X (Nanterre).
He has studied Documentary at São Paulo’s Cinema International Academy, has a Master’s degree in Journalism from the University of São Paulo, and a degree in Journalism from the Federal University of Goiás. He has published three books: “Viagem ao Mundo dos Taleban", or Travel to the Talebans’ World (Geração Editorial, 2002) and “O Destino do Jornal”, or The Newspaper’s Fate (Editora Record, 2008) and “My war against fear: what the risk of death reveals about life” (Amazon, 2019).
