Clarisse Cunha Linke
Brazil Director
Clarisse Cunha Linke holds a PhD in Architecture and Urbanism from the Graduate Program at Fluminense Federal University, in Rio de Janeiro, and a Master’s degree in Social Policy, NGOs, and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She has been the Country Director of ITDP Brazil since 2012, overseeing the organization’s program in the country. She is a Brazilian professional who has been engaged in the planning and implementation of social policies and programs since 2001, with experience in Brazil, Mozambique, and Namibia.
From 2006 to 2011, she served as Director of the Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia (BEN Namibia), where she played a key role in expanding the organization’s activities, supporting the development of what became the most extensive community-based enterprise bicycle distribution network in sub-Saharan Africa. Under her leadership, ITDP Brazil has built two flagship platforms: MobiliCAMPUS, an e-learning platform that has trained more than 35,000 people in sustainable urban mobility over the past six years, and MobiliDADOS, Brazil’s leading platform for monitoring urban mobility indicators.
She has also built a diverse funding portfolio, with partners including the Mitigation Action Facility, the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation, ClimateWorks, the Hewlett, Citi, Oak and Ford Foundations, the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and Clean Air Fund. A widely sought-after speaker on sustainable mobility, Clarisse has given more than 400 presentations at national and international conferences since 2012, including a TEDx talk, reaching an estimated 59,000 people. She is a frequent contributor to Brazilian and international media, including the BBC, Estadão, O Globo, and Folha de São Paulo, and has authored and edited numerous publications, most recently a chapter on parking reform and social justice in Brazil for Routledge’s “The Shoup Doctrine” (2026).
Clarisse received the “Titmuss Examination Prize” from LSE in 2005. In 2010, she was recognized by Ashoka Changemakers in the “Women, Tools, and Technology” Challenge for her work with women in Namibia. In 2019, she was recognized as one of the “Remarkable Women in Transport” by the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI), and in 2023 she received an honorable mention in the “Women Who Inspire in Urban Mobility” category at the Parque da Mobilidade Urbana Award, recognizing her leadership and contributions to sustainable, inclusive mobility in Brazil.
From 2014 to 2024, she was a postgraduate professor at the Social Responsibility and Sustainability Laboratory (LARES) at the Institute of Economics of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). From 2017 to 2019, she served as a Board Member of the Sustainable Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT) Partnership. In addition, she has been a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Mobility from 2018–2021.
