Inclusive Hiring Opens Doors in Latin America

Mayra Duarte de Carvalho, a 31-year-old economist in São Paulo, always understood that she would have to forge her own professional path. Growing up on the sprawling outskirts of Brazil’s biggest city, a university education seemed out of reach. As a Black woman—one of 133 million people across Latin America known as Afro-descendants, whose ancestors were enslaved throughout the continent—she knew no successful people in Brazilian society who looked like her. After she was accepted into a top high school and then a prestigious public university, “I got used to being the only Black person in my class,” she says. “I often felt I didn’t belong.”