I’m married to Marcell, a professor at SMU. We are from south Brazil, which means we love getting together with friends and family and to barbecue. We have three children who began studying at Zion when we moved to Dallas in 2018. In our family, art is a big deal. We love music, filmmaking, sculpting, ceramics, drawing, painting and cooking.
I have a law degree (Juris Doctor) from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná (PUC/PR), and a Post-Graduate Certification in Magistracy from Escola da Magistratura do Paraná (EMP/PR), in Brazil. I worked as a real estate lawyer and adjudicator for 15 years, when I decided to change careers and look for a different life experience. I studied arts, theater, painting, drawing, and stage makeup and worked as a professional makeup artist until my family and I moved to the United States. I taught arts for a few years and ended up falling in love with teaching when I began teaching in Dallas. I’ll be pursuing a Teacher Certification during this school year.
As an adjudicator, I worked as a voluntary mediator for the low-income community in my birth town, Curitiba. My husband was a minister at Comunidade do Redentor, a Lutheran church in Curitiba with almost one thousand members. As directors of the missions department of our church, we sent and cared for missionaries throughout Brazil and abroad. I went on different mission trips in Brazil and Asia. I also was a leader of the Women’s Ministry at our local church, and was involved with discipleship initiatives.
I truly believe in the love and power of God in our children’s lives. I believe in the power of each child to thrive in the face of any challenges they may face. Every one of them is PERFECT. As a teacher, my job is to help them find a way to use their own qualities for good. I truly believe that the future is in our hands and, more importantly, in THEIR hands. My biggest hope is that they become love-centered citizens of the world, making decisions based on love, bringing peace, and taking care of our planet.
"Education does not change the world. Education changes people. And people change the world." -Paulo Freire