Clarisse Cunha Linke

Brazil Director

Clarisse Cunha Linke holds a Master’s degree in Social Policy, NGOs, and Development from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and is a PhD candidate in the Graduate Program in Architecture and Urbanism at the Fluminense Federal University (PPGAU/UFF). She works at ITDP Brazil as Brazil Director.  

Clarisse has been the Executive Director of ITDP Brazil since 2012, overseeing the executive management of the Brazilian office. She is a Brazilian who has been involved in planning and implementing social policies and programs since 2001, with experience in Brazil, Mozambique, and Namibia. From 2006-2011, she was a Director at the Bicycling Empowerment Network Namibia (BEN Namibia), where she played a key role in expanding BEN Namibia’s activities, helping it develop the most extensive community-based enterprise bicycle distribution network in sub-Saharan Africa. Clarisse received the “Titmuss Examination Prize” from LSE in 2005. In 2010, she was awarded by Ashoka Changemakers in the “Women, Tools, and Technology” Challenge for the work done in Namibia with women. From 2014 – 2024, she has been a postgraduate professor at the Social Responsibility and Sustainability Laboratory (LARES) at the Institute of Economics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). From 2017-2019 she was a Board Member of the Sustainable Low Carbon Transport Network (SLoCaT). In addition, she has been a Global Future Council on Mobility member of the World Economic Forum since 20018. In 2019, she was recognized as a “Remarkable Women in Transport” by the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative (TUMI). 

In her Ph.D. she intends to explore how current narratives about the future of mobility have the potential to generate greater inequity and socio-spatial segregation, particularly for women, black people, and residents of Brazilian urban peripheries.