My name is Zairo B. Cheibub and I grew up in Brazil but have had ties to Massachusetts since my senior year in high school when I was foreign exchange student at Westford Academy. One year way from home at an early age was quite important for my personal growth. Most of all, living in an affluent and democratic society highlighted the contrast with my own country’s widespread poverty and, at the time, military dictatorship.
Upon my return to Brazil, I became passionate about improving the social and political conditions of my home country. In search of a deeper understanding of these issues I decided to study Political Science. After earning my BA and MA, I returned to Massachusetts to pursue graduate studies in the MIT Department of Political Science. My three years at MIT were extremely enriching but I came way from the experience realizing that pure academic life was too detached and did not motivated me. Even so, I returned to Brazil and become a professor of Political Science and Sociology at a good federal university.
My true passion has always been teaching and applied social science, i.e., using social sciences theories, frameworks, and tools of social sciences to help solve real-world problems. As such, I have worked for and with local development agencies, NGOs, university extension program, federal ministries, foundations, corporations and, community associations.
I was awarded a Fulbright scholarship in 1997-98. I returned to MIT with the purpose of studying different civil society experiences and experiments that were successful at promoting local development, citizenship rights, poverty amelioration, health care and similar issues.
When I went back to Brazil I created a research center within my universtity- DataUff. Its mission was to provide high quality and accessible applied social science research and to train students to work with groups in civil society. DataUff prospered and developed projects for and with innumerous organizations throughout Brazil.
After several years of running this applied social science research institute, I once again returned to MIT, this time as a mid-career manager at the Sloan Fellows Program for Innovation and Global Leadership. Aside from a rigorous management and leadership training, the Sloan Fellows program also provided me two new insights and directions to pursue. It helped me develop my understanding of the importance of environmental issues in today’s world and it motivated me to incorporate them in my worldview and professional practice. My personal trajectory has led me to emphasize social and economic development aspects of sustainability. With a better understand of the environmental issues my grasp of sustainability became richer and more holistic.
I also realized during this year at the Sloan Fellows Program that private sector companies could also be important agents of transformation and change. Particularly important for me in providing both insights was the S-Lab or Sustainable Business Laboratory class http://mitsloan.mit.edu/sustainability/s-lab.php.
Merida Meridian was one of the S-Lab companies that hosted a student team to understand how its market perceived sustainability and what business opportunities may exist for Merida in this emerging space. Working on the project with the Merida team was a great experience!! I got to know and like Merida and, I guess, Merida also got to like me… I could see first hand how Merida’s leadership is very committed to sustainability and how their values and my own converged. At the end of the project I actively pursued a job at Merida so that I could continue working on the company’s sustainability efforts, among many other tasks…By the way, not being able to afford a fully dedicated sustainability champion is one of the predicaments of a small/medium company that I want to talk about in this blog….
I started working at Merida right after graduating from the MIT Sloan Fellows Program about two years ago. It has been fun, challenging, educational and above all a vindication of my perception that a corporation can also be an agent of change. I am looking forward to sharing some of these experiences in this blog. I hope that by doing it I can learn, help others learn and together we can build a more sustainable world.
