Governance of innovation
for businesses and territories
in transition to sustainability.

I'm Emerson, Brazilian. A strategist and researcher working at the intersection of innovation, sustainability, and development. I design strategy, co-create the organisational conditions, and facilitate the processes through which businesses and territories in transition to sustainability create, retain, and distribute value.

For twelve years I've worked where structure, capital, and institutions have to evolve together, from the first draft of an idea to the governance of a mature operation: from a grassroots movement like Façamos to a regional capacity-and-innovation programme like ConectaDEL, from research on refugee livelihoods with the LSE and UNHCR to the strategy, governance, and risk of a grain operation in the Cerrado.

In recent years I've moved between applied research and management practice in complex, regulated, multi-institutional environments, across Brazil, the United Kingdom, Africa, and the United States. These are settings where capital and partnerships often need facilitation, because many actors need alignment and consensus-building to collaborate. In 2025 I founded SixTree, where I help climate-transition startups bring the architecture of their business and their product together into one.

People usually come to me to talk through the first version of something they want to bring into being. What I bring to that conversation is governance of innovation: I help build, around a technology, the business able to retain the value it creates. In practice, that means designing the strategy, the boundaries of the business, and the institutional conditions so that the profits of innovation stay with those who innovated, rather than leaking to imitators.

I studied Sustainable Development at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU), a global cradle of innovation studies, based at the University of Sussex (UK), ranked the world's best in development studies for ten consecutive years. I'm a Chevening alumnus, part of the UK government's global network of leaders present in more than 160 countries. I write The Sustainability Scientist, where I publish analyses on innovation, governance, and sustainable development.

On a personal note: I'm keen on making memories, by meeting people and visiting places. I'm a traveller at heart; I enjoy seeking out bars, cafés and street food, and heading off to trek or hike. I've called several places home. These days I find my calm upside down in yoga, and on a bike almost every day.