Ilona Szabó de Carvalho

Ilona is a globally recognized thought leader on issues of civic action, drug policy and violence prevention and reduction and has extensive experience leading national and global networks.

Between 2011 and 2016 she was the executive coordinator of the Global Commission on Drug Policy,[8] a network of former presidents, entrepreneurs and public intellectuals. She previously coordinated the Latin American Commission on Drugs and Democracy. During her tenure she was responsible for helping shape global strategy with former presidents, supreme court justices, business and world leaders, including Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Cesar Gaviria, Richard Branson and the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.[9][8]

Since 2015, she has been a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum and a Responsible Leader at the BMW Foundation. She is the co-founder of the AGORA movement that aims to shape and help implement a new vision and public policy agenda in Brazil,[10][8] and she has launched a number of expert networks. In 2018 she was awarded the order of merit of Public Security, from the Brazilian Ministry of Public Security and the Office of the President of Brazil.[11]

Between 2008 and 2011, she was the civil society liaise for the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, working with diplomats and grass-roots organizations around the world.[12]

In the mid-2000s while working for the NGO Viva Rio, Ilona coordinated one of the world’s largest disarmament campaigns[13] and helped shape a national referendum[14] to ban the sale of handguns to Brazilian citizens.[15][16][17][18][19]

Ilona Szabó is currently a Senior Public Policy Fellow at Columbia University School of International Affairs and Public Administration (SIPA). She earned a Master’s Degree in International Studies at the Peace and Conflict Studies Department from the University of Uppsala in Sweden, a specialist degree in International Development, from the Oslo University and a Bachelor’s Degree in International Relations. She has joined several executive courses, such as in Global Leadership and Public Policy for the 21st Century at the Kennedy School at Harvard,[20] Transformational Leadership at the Said Business School at Oxford University and a Management Course on Disarmament, Demobilization & Reintegration (DDR) at the Swedish National Defense College, Stockholm. In 1995 she spent a year at a Cultural Exchange Program in Latvia with the American Field Service (AFS).[19]

Ilona is a columnist at Folha de S. Paulo. Between 2016 and 2018 Ilona Szabó was a commentator on the Estúdio i program, broadcast on GloboNews.[21] She spoke at TED in 2014,[22] and at Davos[23] and other World Economic Forum events in 2016, 2017 and 2019.[24][25][26] Ilona is routinely involved in overseeing communications and outreach on behalf of the Igarapé Institute. She is the author of two books: Drogas: As Histórias que Não te Contaram ("Drugs: The untold stories") and Segurança Pública para Virar o Jogo ("Public security to change the game"), published by Zahar in 2017 and 2018. She was the co-script writer and researcher for the award-winning documentary Breaking the Taboo.[27][19]

Ilona Szabó serves on the board of the Drug Policy Alliance and of the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI), on the advisory board of the Young Global Leaders of the World Economic Forum and presides the Public Security Council of the Rio de Janeiro State Industry Federation (FIRJAN).[28] She was a mentor of the Columbia Women's leadership network in Brazil,[29] served as an international jurist for the Bloomberg Mayors Challenge[30] in Latin America and for the MacArthur’s Foundation $100 million dollar initiative – 100&Change.[19]

In early 2019, Ilona was nominated by Brazilian Minister of Justice and Public Security Sérgio Moro to a voluntary advisory position at the Brazilian National Council for Criminal and Penitentiary Policy, a consulting board which conducts assessments of the penitentiary system, proposes criminal policy guidelines and do inspections of penal establishments, among other duties. Due to massive attacks by extremists supporters of the Brazilian far-right government on social media, Ilona was removed from the council by the minister on the order of President Jair Bolsonaro.[41][42]

In April 2020, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ilona was mentioned (for the third time) by the President during an official announcement regarding Moro's decision to resign. At the time, Bolsonaro made reference to Ilona's nomination to the Brazilian National Council for Criminal and Penitentiary Policy on national broadcast television with a misogynistic streak[43] and misleading information. "To witness something so meaningless being used in such a  key moment is to understand that the speech was made to the President's constituency, the ones who need real or imaginary enemies. I am an imaginary piece in a chess game. And there is the gender issue, that is constantly present in the President's stance", said Ilona in an interview for the Brazilian magazine Época.[44][43][45]

Ilona has a daughter and is married to Robert Muggah, a Canadian political scientist, urban specialist and co-founder of the Igarapé Institute.[9] She practices Yoga and loves to be close to nature, to travel, sing and dance.[19]

• What is Behind Brazil’s Homicide Decline? — Technical Note, Igarape Institute (2019; with Robert Muggah)
• Segurança Pública é Solução — Policy Paper, Igarape Institute (2018, editor)
• Rio Seguro — Policy Paper, Igarape Institute (editor, 2018)
• Making Cities Safer: Citizen Security Innovations from Latin America — Strategic Paper, Igarape Institute (2016; with Robert Muggah, Nathalie Alvarado, Lina Marmolejo and Ruddy Wangwith)
• Measurement Matters: Designing New Metrics for a Drug Policy That Works — Strategic Paper, Igarape Institute (2015; with Robert Muggah and Katherine Aguirre)
• Política de Drogas no Brasil: A Mudança Já Começou — Strategic Paper, Igarape Institute (2014; with Ana Paula Pellegrino)
• Taking Control: Pathways for Drug Policies that Work — Report, Global Commission on Drug Policy (2014)