Jair Ribeiro da Silva

Brazilian entrepreneur Jair Ribeiro da Silva works to transform the quality of Brazil’s public education system through partnerships with companies and donors. Under his leadership, Associação Parceiros da Educação has reached more than 600 public schools and has impacted more than 750,000 students.

Through the NGO Parceiros, Ribeiro structures partnerships between the private sector and public schools in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. He founded Casa do Saber in 2004 as a center for courses and cultural events located in the city of São Paulo and is a co-investor and Operating Partner of Proz Educação, a company focused on consolidating vocational education schools (controlled by EB Capital). 

Ribeiro began his career in 1979 as a lawyer at Pinheiro Neto Advogados [pt], where he focused on mergers and acquisitions. In 1988, he co-founded and became Chief Executive Officer of Banco Patrimônio, the third largest investment bank in Brazil at the time. He also co-founded and served as CEO of Patrimônio, a mergers and acquisitions consultancy in partnership with Salomon Brothers. In 1992, the company obtained its investment banking license and Ribeiro coordinated major operations in the Brazilian capital market, such as the privatization of Telebrás, considered the largest privatization in Brazil, and the first launch of ADRs in the international market (Aracruz S.A.). 

From 1999-2000 Ribeiro served as president of Banco Chase Manhattan in Brazil. He then became managing director of the international equity area of JP Morgan NY where he was responsible for the European, Asian, Australian and Latin American markets. In 2006 he co-founded CPM Braxis SA, an IT company that would go on to have more than 7,000 employes and sell for R$ 517 million. From 2005-2020, he was a shareholder, board member and director of Sertrading SA, one of the largest foreign trade companies in Brazil. From 2011-2018, he was Co-CEO and shareholder of the control group of Banco Indusval SA. During his tenure, they developed Guide Investimentos, a wealth management platform and Smartbank S.A., a Brazilian B2B digital banking platform in partnership with The Hive, a Silicon Valley group.

Ribeiro has served as a member of the Conselho Estadual da Educação (São Paulo’s Board of Education), the Management Committee of the São Paulo Education Department and was a board member of Todos pela Educação, a Brazilian public-education advocacy, nonprofit organization for which he was recognized with a Trip Transformadores education award. He has been acknowledged for his services to Brazilian public education by both the World Fund and the Brazil Fund, and co-led the construction of the Pact for Racial Equity, which defined a new ESG protocol for Brazilian companies on racial issues.

He holds a degree in law from the University of São Paulo (1982), in Economics from FAAP (1982), and a Master’s in Law from the University of California – Berkeley (1984). In the fall of 2019, he served as a visiting scholar at Stanford University School of Education (CA, USA).