Maria da Graça Prado

Lead Research and Policy Adviser, CoST – The Infrastructure Transparency Initiative

Maria da Graça is a qualified lawyer admitted to practice in Brazil and Portugal, with 10 years’ experience in the infrastructure sector. With a Ph.D. in Economic Law from the University of São Paulo (with Distinction) and an MSc in Development from the LSE (with Distinction and Dissertation Award), her career has progressed to combine Law & Policy issues.

As a Lead Policy & Research Advisor at CoST, the Infrastructure Transparency Initiative, her work focuses on providing evidence-based advice to improve accountability and transparency in public infrastructure, developing policy positions that transform research findings into actionable insights. The key research methodologies she uses include legal and regulatory assessments, in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, ethnographic observation, and data analysis — all applied to enhance the design of public infrastructure.

Before turning her focus to governance and policy issues, she worked at top-tier litigation and international dispute resolution firms in Brazil, France, and the UK. Her previous experiences include advising on high-profile anti-corruption cases involving Brazilian companies; investigating the causes of one of Brazil’s largest environmental/mining disasters; researching resilience products for emerging countries (including sustainable and clean infrastructure); working on strategies to exit in-work poverty in the construction sector; protecting the labour rights of construction workers; and testing a new Industrial Policy Methodology developed by UNIDO, which included clean energy infrastructure.

She is also a published author, with award-winning academic research in the infrastructure sector, including evaluations of Brazil’s PAC Infrastructure Policy and the Cairu-2030 project — an IDB initiative for sustainable infrastructure in Bahia. Her blog, A Green Light, shares some of her reflections on policy, law, and development.