Paulo Sotero Marques Named New Director of Brazil Institute

The Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars announces that leading Brazilian journalist Paulo Sotero Marques will join the Center on September 18, 2006, as the director of the Brazil Institute.

The Brazil Institute was founded to stimulate and foster greater attention to Brazil and the U.S.-Brazilian relationship within the Washington policy community as well as in Brazil. In keeping with the Center's mission to bridge the worlds of scholarship and policymaking, the Brazil Institute provides a nonpartisan forum for in-depth discussion of critical policy issues affecting Brazil and the United States, issues high-quality and timely publications on a broad range of topics, and brings Public Policy Scholars from Brazil to Washington for short periods of residence at the Center.

Paulo Sotero was the Washington correspondent for Estado de S.Paulo, a leading Brazilian daily newspaper, for the last seventeen years. He has been also a regular commentator and analyst for the BBC radio's Portuguese language service, Radio France Internationale, and the Brazilian Rádio Eldorado. Since 2003 he has been an adjunct lecturer at Georgetown University, both in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and at the Center for Latin American Studies of the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service.

Lee Hamilton, director and president of the Woodrow Wilson Center, welcomed Sotero's arrival at the Center. "Paulo comes to us with a wealth and breadth of knowledge not only about Brazil but also about the United States and the hemisphere generally," Hamilton said. "He enjoys the respect of his fellow Brazilians and all of us in the Washington policy community who have come to rely on his insights and expertise. I can think of no one better or more talented to steer the Brazil Institute through this next phase of its development."

Sotero has a BA in history from the Catholic University of Pernambuco, Brazil, and an MA in Journalism and Public Affairs from The American University in Washington, D.C. In 1987, he received the prestigious Maria Moors Cabot Award Special Citation from the Graduate School of Journalism, Columbia University. He is also the recipient of the 1993 Distinguished Visiting Lecturer award from the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. In Brazil, he was awarded the 1978 "Prêmio Abril de Reportagem" for Veja magazine's cover story on Paraguay and for an investigative report on the assassination of Chilean General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires, Argentina.