This content was published on April 18, 2021 – 12:00
Alba Santandreu
Sao Paulo, Apr 18 (EFE) .- Considered one of the most influential CEOs in Latin America, the Brazilian Luiza Helena Trajano has taken the reins of a business front to accelerate vaccination in the country, a challenge that she combines with the direction of her company and activism for gender equality.
Trajano (1951, Franca) transformed a small network of stores in the interior of Sao Paulo into a retail empire (Magazine Luiza) with more than 50,000 employees throughout the country that has overcome various economic crises.
A few years ago she landed on the prestigious Forbes list and in 2020 she became the richest woman in Brazil, but her career goes beyond the business world.
“Since I was little I was always closely linked to the causes of my country, be they social or economic,” she said in a virtual interview with Efe.
ACCELERATE VACCINATION IN THE COUNTRY HARDEST BY THE PANDEMIC
Aware of her influence, the businesswoman recently launched the “Unidos por la Vacuna” front, which operates in different areas and collects private donations to facilitate transport, storage and the application of doses of the anticovid vaccine in the Brazilian public health system. .
Trajano emphasizes that the objective of the front is not to “commercialize vaccines”, as has been proposed by other businessmen who seek to acquire antidotes to immunize the employees of their companies, at a time when the country suffers from the lack of available doses. in the international market.
“We do not believe in that. I am not against groups that want to buy, I want to make it clear, but as long as 60 or 70% of the population is not vaccinated, it is useless to vaccinate officials and leave the rest unvaccinated. There are no vaccines in the world, “he said.
With more than 368,000 deaths and 13.8 million cases of covid-19, Brazil is currently one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic, which has put the health network on the brink of collapse in much of the country.
The worsening of the situation in Brazil coincides with a slow-moving vaccination. Just over 12% of the population has received the first dose, while the booster has only been inoculated in 4% of Brazilians.
ACTIVISM TO REDUCE THE GAP BETWEEN MEN AND WOMEN
Direct, charismatic and with a folksy tone, Trajano has risen as one of the most respected voices in Brazil. His name has come to be tested in politics, but the president of the Board of Directors of Magazine Luiza rules out taking a step forward in that direction.
“The great transformations do not start from a hero or heroine. They start from an organized civil society that thinks and knows what it wants for Brazil. I am non-partisan,” he emphasizes.
“What I want is to continue being a nonpartisan policy, doing strategic planning. No country can get ahead if it does not know what it wants for the next 10 years in education, health, employment and housing,” he declares.
She prefers to act in the rear. For eight years she has led the Mulheres Group of Brazil, which has 87,000 women around the world “of different social classes, colors and religions” who fight to stimulate female participation in all areas, including business.
Brazil, recalls the businesswoman, only has 7% of women on boards of directors of companies with open capital, a figure that is reduced to 4% if the owners of companies and daughters of owners are excluded.
Aware of the abyss that still exists between men and women in the business world, the group has entered with a proposal in Congress to establish quotas in both private and public companies so that the presence of women in the boards of directors reaches the 30%.
If meritocracy were to be waited, he points out, it would take more than a century to reach that goal.
“I am totally in favor of quotas, they are a transitory process to correct an inequality,” he underlines. EFE
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