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HBS Professor Rosabeth Moss Kanter, independent researcher Daniella Suarez (Harvard Graduate School of Education), and Research Director 
Ai-Ling Jamila Malone (Advanced Leadership Initiative prepared this case. It was reviewed and approved before publication by a company 
designate. Funding for the development of this case was provided by the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard University and not by the 
company. ALI cases are developed solely as the basis for class discussion. Cases are not intended to serve as endorsements, sources of primary 
data, or illustrations of effective or ineffective management 
 
Copyright © 2015 President and Fellows of Harvard College. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, call 1-800-545-7685, 
write Harvard Business School Publishing, Boston, MA 02163, or go to www.hbsp.harvard.edu. This publication may not be digitized, photocopied, 
or otherwise reproduced, posted, or transmitted, without the express written permission of the Advanced Leadership Initiative at Harvard 
University. 
R O S A B E T H M O S S K A N T E R 
D A N I E L L A S U A R E Z 
A I - L I N G J A M I L A M A L O N E 
Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 
In 2015, midway through the creation of her new venture, Beatriz Cardoso wanted to strengthen 
Laboratório de Educação’s financial model at a time when Brazil was no longer experiencing strong 
economic growth. She continued to wrestle with how to market her organization’s goals so that others 
understood why Laboratório de Educação focused on targeting adults to ultimately help children learn 
to read. Cardoso headed to Harvard University as an Advanced Leadership Fellow for 2013 with a 
dream of propelling Brazilian education through her newly established organization, Laboratório de 
Educação (Education Laboratory). While education was typically associated with traditional classrooms 
and teachers inside a school building, Cardoso created an innovative solution to teach students 
fundamental literacy skills that was “outside the building,”1 by focusing on adults, who interacted with 
children both within a school setting and outside the school setting, such as parents and caregivers. 
“Thinking outside the box” was a common metaphor for creativity. As an advanced leader, Cardoso 
had to think outside a “whole school building of boxes.”2 Cardoso developed a rigorous process of 
research, innovation, and testing for Laboratório de Educação’s products. With her new venture, she 
had many obstacles to overcome. 
Cardoso had already faced the difficult responsibility of managing a newly formed organization in 
Brazil while learning in a completely different continent, while at Harvard in 2013. As the 
organization’s initial fundraising model proved to be more challenging than initially planned, Cardoso 
would have to rethink how Laboratório recruited donor support for their mission. 
Background on Brazil 
Economy 
In 2012, when Cardoso initially founded Laboratório de Educação, Brazil had the 8th largest 
economy in the world with a GDP of US$1.531 trillion.3 That year, annual GDP growth rose by 3.5 
percent and was projected to grow, giving consumers and investors confidence in the market. 
However, despite the growth observed in recent years, Brazil still faced several challenges. The country 
was ranked 85th out of 187 countries in human development and mobility4 and 75th out of 180 
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316-055 Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 
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countries in the corruption index.5 Brazil’s inequality was among one of the highest in the world, with 
a GINI coefficient of 52.7, showing a very high disparity between the rich and the poor.6 
By 2015, Brazil was the 7th largest economy in the world. Beginning in 2009, Brazil’s economy 
experienced enormous growth rates, and years where unemployment was at record lows, salaries 
increased, and consumer spending increased.7 Low unemployment rates pushed up wages at rates 
higher than the GDP growth, therefore encouraging consumers to borrow more. By 2015, these rapid 
growth trends were no longer sustainable—real wages began to fall since March 2015 and 
unemployment rates crept up to 6.4 percent as of April 2015. Economists predicted unemployment 
rates to reach 8 percent by the end of 2015.8 With GDP falling 1.6 percent compared with 2014’s results, 
Brazil registered its worst economic indicators in six years.9 
Education 
Brazil’s public investment in education increased between 2000 and 2010 from 3.5 percent of total 
GDP to 5.6 percent, but still the country spent below the average for OECD (Organization for Economic 
Co-operation and Development) countries.10 Additionally, while enrollment rates in early childhood 
education increased between 2005 and 2011, only 36 percent of 3-year olds and 57 percent of 4-year 
olds were enrolled in a program in 2011, compared to the OECD average of 67 percent and 85 percent 
respectively.11 By the third-grade, just over half of Brazilian students achieved “adequate” proficiency 
in reading and writing, and only 42 percent of them exhibited the desired mathematical skills for their 
age. In terms of annual per pupil expenditure on early childhood education, Brazil ranked last among 
OECD and other G20 countries.12 With 57 percent of Brazil’s adults never attaining a secondary school, 
Cardoso and many others recognized that there was a serious need in the Brazilian education sector. 
Very few university students wanted to go into the teaching profession. While greater job security 
was an advantage to being a public employee, the downside included poor work conditions and the 
profession being undervalued by the public. Brazil’s public school teachers were underpaid compared 
to their OECD counterparts, where Brazilian teachers made $10,375 annually compared to $29,411 
average for the OECD.13 Additionally, with Brazil facing an economic crisis in 2015, teachers across 
Brazil felt the effects of a dwindling budget. Many states – such as Paraná – had cut teacher retirement 
pensions.14 In the Sao Paulo state, teachers protested for almost three months as a response to no raises, 
leaving Sao Paulo public school students without teachers until June 2015.15 
Beatriz Cardoso and her Educational Interests 
From an early age, Cardoso expressed an interest in education, literature, and language acquisition. 
Her educational trajectory was strongly influenced by her parents, both of whom were well-respected 
academics in Brazil. Her father was an influential sociologist and politician, who favored 
democratization and eventually was exiled for his beliefs. Cardoso’s experiences abroad in Britain, 
coupled with her elite private school education in Brazil, provided contrasting experiences. Private 
school in Brazil was intellectually engaging, while abroad, Cardoso felt that learning was harsh, 
restrictive, and not engaging. When Cardoso returned to Brazil in 1978 inspired by her experiences, 
she became a pre-school teacher. 
In 1985, at age 25, Cardoso moved to Spain to study literacy and language acquisition under world-
renowned psychologist Ana Teberosky, who later became her mentor and colleague. Teberosky, an 
expert in cognitive psychology and language acquisition who, with another prominent Latin American 
scholar Emilia Ferreiro, developed the first theory about the psychogenesis of language that built on a 
constructivist approach to child development. Teberosky and Ferreiro published the book, Literacy Do
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Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 316-055 
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before Schooling, in 1982. Their book demonstrated that there are some regularities and stages in the 
developmental process that children experience.16 They created an evidence-based theoretical 
framework that demonstrates how children learn to read and write. Following this publication, 
Teberosky continued to research early childhood oral and written language education as well teacher 
training. 
 Studies proved that lack of language acquisition and development at an early age negatively 
impacted the individual’s future and society as a whole. Research showed that developing strong 
language skills early on was critical to student achievement, an area where Brazil was 
underperforming. Cardoso identified an opportunity to apply Teberosky's work to improve early 
childhood language acquisition and development. She returned to Sao Paulo, Brazil, to finish her Ph.D. 
in teacher training and literacy in 1997 while simultaneously teaching students at the University of Sao 
Paulo’s School of Education. 
CEDAC’s Beginning 
In 1997, after lengthy conversations with two long-time friends and former teachers, Cardoso 
formed CEDAC (Centro de Educação e Documentação para Ação Comunitária, which translates to 
Center for Education and Documentation for Community Action). The organization sought to improve 
teaching and learning in Brazilian classrooms by training teachers and school leaders. CEDAC aimed 
to democratize access to knowledge by developing and researching best models and teaching practices 
to expand these models to public schools throughout Brazil. 
To achieve this, CEDAC created teacher-training programs, developed technology platforms, 
published teaching guides, and provided learning materials to schools and their teachers. CEDAC’s 
programs were designed to work with more than a single school or a small group of schools. They 
believed, in order to improve Brazilian education, the organization needed to work with district-level 
pedagogical coordinators that were trained by CEDAC as teacher-trainers and that would work with 
entire school networks. The initial challenge was to produce and sustain meaningful results and 
collaboration with local municipalities. As the executive director and director of pedagogy for the 
organization, Cardoso used her credibility to fundraise and bring attention to CEDAC’s work. 
In 1999 Vale, a Brazilian multinational and the world’s third largest mining corporation, partnered 
with CEDAC. Cardoso was initially charged with evaluating Vale’s educational projects. After 
completing the evaluation successfully and establishing credibility, CEDAC was asked to design the 
foundation’s main educational project, Escola que Vale (A School That’s Worth It), which earned the 
organization US$2 million in funding. Escola que Vale successfully expanded to thirty school districts 
and was recognized by UNESCO as one of the top six teacher training programs in the world. Given 
the successful expansion, the Vale Foundation wanted to rapidly expand the work into a new project, 
Ação Educação (Action and Education), which involved operations in 130 school districts targeted at 
educational leaders at the school and district levels. 
This initial partnership opened up other partnership opportunities such as, Natura Cosmetics (a 
Brazilian manufacturer and marketer of beauty products) and Votorantim (one of the largest industrial 
conglomerates in Latin America with operations in finance, energy, steel, pulp, etc.), two well-known 
Brazilian companies. In 2007, Natura Cosmetics sponsored US$1 million in education project that 
resulted in Trilhas, a set of literacy materials for primary education teachers. The materials included 
activities to support teachers who taught kids to read and write. Because the Brazilian Ministry of 
Education approved materials that were used in schools, CEDAC rewrote the materials to fit the 
publication requirements outlined by the Ministry of Education. Its success eventually led to the Do
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316-055 Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 
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Brazilian Ministry of Education using Trilhas as a national educational policy, where the project 
impacted 3 million students through 140,000 teachers.17 
Conflicting Interests and Departure from CEDAC 
Amidst the successes of CEDAC programs and products, Cardoso felt that CEDAC’s autonomy and 
core mission were compromised by pressures to scale programs too quickly. “There were many 
internal discussions over the decisions because they were very tied to our finances. We had to give in 
to what [the corporations] wanted. This bothered me—I had my convictions and I didn’t dedicate my 
life to serve corporations,” asserted Cardoso. 
Cardoso noticed that, despite 10 years of productive partnerships, sponsor organizations started to 
focus more on marketing to promote their image than on the implementation of their work. “In 2009, I 
began to notice that our partnership relationships began to change. At first, they were more like 
alliances—each organization contributed their expertise to solve a social problem,” said Cardoso. 
“Before, our agreement was one where they financed a project and we made the project come to life 
and it was wonderful, but around 2009 some corporations wanted to use NGOs as an operating arm of 
their corporation." This was common for corporate founders who used a “spare change” model of 
giving for branding or public relations rather than for impact.18 After consulting with CEDAC leaders 
and coming to an agreement, Cardoso decided to leave CEDAC to create a separate organization. 
Armed with an idea and less than US$150,000 in startup funds from CEDAC, Cardoso created 
Laboratório de Educação. 
The Beginning of Laboratório de Educação 
In 2010, Cardoso recruited the help of long-time friend Andrea Guida Bisognin and her former 
mentor, Ana Teberosky, to begin planning Laboratório de Educação. In Brazil, there was a lack of 
materials specifically designed to address the needs of teachers and of people who work with teachers, 
such as pedagogical coordinators at the school and district level. Laboratório de Educação was 
committed to filling that gap and “producing materials without an interest in making a profit,” said 
Cardoso. “Our goal [at Laboratório de Educação] was for these products, which were developed by an 
experienced team for non-commercial purposes, to raise the bar in the market for educational materials. 
And, in addition, that they would be used by nonprofits and school districts that could bring them to 
scale,” she added. 
Together with Guida Bisognin, Cardoso determined that the organization would need a US$275,000 
annual budget. They set a goal to recruit corporations to sponsor their work. Laboratório de Educação 
pitch to potential funders included all the reasoning behind their decisions – the focus on language, on 
working with adults that mediate learning, the longitudinal view of child development and structure 
around age groups. Laboratório de Educação targeted institutions that had potential synergy with their 
focus area. Because the products followed a research and development process, they determined which 
supporters would be interested mostly on funding the research or the implementation of the projects. 
“Our thought was that it shouldn’t be hard to find ten organizations that could support us annually. 
But it became difficult to find the money,” said Cardoso. “Corporations didn’t want to fund projects 
that were outside of their own. They wanted to put their name on a project. They wanted to have 
control of what the project accomplished and how it worked.” Additionally, Laboratório de Educação 
was initially a veryconceptual organization and many investors insisted on existing tangible products. 
In late 2012, they received seed money from an anonymous Dutch family foundation that funded 
the first year’s work. Later, Deutsche Bank’s Foundation gave Laboratório de Educação US$25,000 to Do
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Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 316-055 
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begin their work on the Toda Criança Pode Aprender blog. IBM also pledged US$14,000 to the 
organization and helped Laboratório de Educação with their strategic planning and fundraising. Both 
Deutsche Bank and IBM gave Laboratório de Educação the credibility it needed. But other bureaucratic 
hurdles made it difficult to lay the groundwork for the new organization; for instance, to open an NGO 
bank account, Cardoso needed to show documentation that the NGO had existed for at least five years, 
had a large quantity of cash (about US$250,000), and a corporation number. Laboratório de Educação 
failed to meet all of these requirements. The main challenge was transferring the team’s more than 15 
years of experience to the new institution. 
Connections to Harvard 
In 2009, Harvard Graduate School of Education Professor and a co-chair of ALI Fernando Reimers 
connected Cardoso to his activities. She initially was interested in becoming a visiting professor 
through the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies and visited Harvard to teach a class 
in 2011. It was then that she met with the Advanced Leadership Initiative (ALI) Fellowship Director 
who told her about the unique year long program that prepares experienced leaders to fill gaps and 
solve large scale complex problems in poverty, health, education, the environment, and more. The ALI 
program provides Fellows with the tools and skills to succeed in these challenging endeavors. Fellows 
have a core course, course audits, think tanks, field experiences, and access to the university’s 
intellectual resources as well as a network of current and past Fellows. 
Cardoso formally submitted her expression of interest to ALI and explained, “I was excited about 
the concept of the program. The opportunity to learn at Harvard with Fellows from around the world 
with a variety of experiences attracted me to the program.” After an extensive selection process, 
Cardoso was invited to be a 2013 Advanced Leadership Fellow. While Cardoso was unsure about being 
physically separated from Laboratório de Educação, she believed the skills that she would acquire from 
her time at ALI would add significant value. She recalled, “It seemed it would be hard for Laboratório 
de Educação to build up without the principal agent there, but it was quite the opposite; there was a 
lot of shared responsibility and it worked.” While at Harvard, Cardoso refined the ideas and operations 
of Laboratório de Educação with the support of professors and colleagues. 
The Harvard Advanced Leadership experience allowed her to focus on creating a structure of 
governance for Laboratório de Educação that would allow the organization to be sustainable and 
autonomous without her physically present. “The experience was worth it, and it was very productive. 
I learned from professionals and professors here, had access to all Harvard faculties, in addition to all 
the academic benefits,” added Cardoso. Harvard’s international culture inspired her to think about the 
diverse interactions that happen within Harvard’s classrooms. 
She joined global discussions on literacy while representing the Laboratório de Educação. While 
taking part in international seminars and classes she made connections with Ph.D. students interested 
in international education who might use Laboratório de Educação in their papers. “It was a great 
experience to spark the interests of experts here [at Harvard],” said Cardoso. Cardoso also grew her 
professional network. “You leave here with a group of colleagues for life, colleagues that you learned 
from and learned with,” said Cardoso. “There is no doubt that during that year I had the chance to 
open my mind to the experiences of others and to have the support of my colleagues for future 
projects.” In 2015, Cardoso took part in the first Latin America Learns conference at the Harvard 
Graduate School of Education, where she participated in a dialogue about the role of education in 
propelling the region forward through social cohesion. Do
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316-055 Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 
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Laboratório de Educação’s Work 
The Laboratório de Educação’s work was centered around the research and product development 
process, and one that Cardoso saw emphasized in her Harvard academic work. The organization 
conducted research for outside stakeholders, such as UNESCO and the Brazilian Ministry of Education, 
to expand their social reach, but also to bring increasing credibility to their work. “There are a lot of 
people running education in Brazil, but few people producing knowledge,” added Cardoso. “This is 
what distinguished the Laboratório de Educação from other organizations.” 
Cardoso envisioned and implemented a cyclical process of research, innovation, and testing for the 
solutions created by the organization. Laboratório de Educação sought to create materials for adults 
that addressed every child’s most important social influences—educators within a school setting and 
educators outside the school setting, such as caregivers. “We work with adults and not directly with 
the child,” explained Cardoso. “Many NGOs look directly at the children because they are a large 
market but we are concerned with the public systems and caregivers that directly impact a child’s 
intellectual development.” 
Laboratório de Educação materials built on a foundation of available multidisciplinary scientific 
knowledge. Pilot tests and focus groups were conducted to understand the user’s experience. Then, 
the tools and materials were designed and redesigned accordingly. Next, these materials were tested 
and refined once more using feedback from educators and observers. It was a process of continuous 
improvement and iteration. This process is similar to rapid prototyping common in technology 
development.19 
Cardoso’s organization sought to fill education gaps in Brazil, and in doing so had to redefine the 
space. The Laboratório de Educação exemplified the idea of advanced leadership; it was unique by 
bridging worlds that do not often intersect: academia, public schools, the social sector, and society. 
Advanced Leaders create solutions that required more than a one-off approach because, like education 
in Brazil, authority was divided, and multiple stakeholders with divergent interests made outcomes 
difficult to measure. Despite the large-scale and complex nature of her goal, Cardoso was committed 
to ensuring that all children, in and outside school, have the right to cognitive development through 
their interactions with adults. Laboratório de Educação worked within and outside schools. 
Work Within Schools: Teachers 
Within the school setting, Laboratório de Educação had projects that were differentiated by a child’s 
age. Aprender Linguagem (Learn Language) serviced Brazil’s youngest learners ages 0-5. Espaço de 
Leitura (Reading Corner) focused on children ages 6- 8, and Aprender a Estudar (Learning to Study) 
worked with children ages 9-10. The materials from these projects focused on developing the 
intellectual capacity of the child through more purposeful interactions with language. 
“Aprender Linguagem is the first complete product that wehave. From here, others will emerge,” 
said Cardoso. Through four cartoon characters representing children of different early childhood age 
groups, the online Aprender Linguagem platform illustrated how language development could occur in 
ordinary situations. (See Exhibit 1) The platform addressed and provided explanations to issues that 
affect all ages: peer interaction, phonetics and phonology, vocabulary, grammar, and speech. The 
explanations contained practical and simple suggestions of everyday language development 
opportunities, guides and strategies for caregivers and educators to stimulate the cognitive 
development of children, and included scientific evidence and academic research that offered a more 
complex explanation of each step in linguistic development. Do
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Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 316-055 
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The Aprender Linguagem materials were created and structured by considering the questions that 
adults voiced to the founding team about interacting with children and correcting their language 
mistakes. “The idea is that the material is accessible to all adults, regardless of their own level of 
education,” explained Cardoso. Based on the principle that no sole actor was responsible for a child’s 
education, the tool was intended to be appropriate for parents, teachers, and any other educator. Within 
the online platform, Aprender Linguagem offered checklists and other resources for preschool teachers 
to use while they lesson planned. Teachers could organize their lessons and make better use of available 
resources under the checklist guidance. Additionally, research from the University of Barcelona, the 
Laboratório de Educação’s partner, was turned into an academic publication for the scientific 
community to advance the prevailing understandings of adult-child interactions around language. 
Cardoso recognized the need to create partnerships with public organizations and local governments 
to sponsor and implement the materials. Therefore, the Laboratório de Educação tested these materials 
in Mato Grosso, a rural state bordering Bolivia, and Sao Paulo state. “Because Aprender Linguagem relies 
on technology, we wondered if it would be a viable option in both the rural and urban context,” 
explained Nicole Paulet Piedra, a Harvard Graduate School of Education alumna from the 
International Education Policy program who had assisted on several research projects and in 2015 
served as an assistant coordinator for the organization. 
The Espaço de Leitura program focused on the informal education of the child and via digital books 
that helped adults probe children to think about the complexities of language. By 2015, three digital 
books were available via the program’s website. Here, the reader could interact with the text via games, 
and a comprehension guide. (See Exhibit 2) When using the platform, users can choose to have the 
stories read by the different story characters or a narrator. By late 2015, IBM was turning Espaço de 
Leitura into an iBook available through the Apple Store to receive feedback on the ways readers used 
and interacted with the product. The Laboratório de Educação would use that data to adjust their web-
based program based on what users utilized the most. 
In 2014, the Aprender a Estudar project went through an Indiegogo crowd funding campaign, where 
Cardoso set a US$33,000 fundraising goal. 43 percent of the project was funded by the time the 
campaign expired.20 Cardoso sought donors to fund the research to design materials and a small pilot 
of the program. With the funds, Laboratório de Educação conducted a six-week intervention study in 
the Mato Groso state using two 5th grade classes. “What we learned was that it was difficult to create a 
campaign that was appealing and for people to donate,” explained Laboratório de Educação’s 
Assistant Coordinator Paulet Piedra. 
The pilot involved a sequence of activities within the classrooms to help students comprehend 
dense history and science texts. These tools focused on breaking down vocabulary and difficult terms, 
learning to locate and classify information, and using graphic resources within a text. “What we found 
was that the structures of history and science textbooks were very complex and seldom provided 
students, or teachers, tools to visually represent them or to facilitate ‘breaking down’ the 
communicative aspects of the text, in order to reach content comprehension,” explained Paulet Piedra. 
Qualitative results indicated that the materials and lesson guides needed improvements, but teachers’ 
practices had progressed in some areas. The teachers reported that the activities were engaging for 
students; especially those that struggled. In 2015, the project was still in progress. 
Work Outside of Schools: Caregivers 
The Toda Criança Pode Aprender (All Children Can Learn) blog and Facebook page focused on 
families and caregivers. In 2015, the blog reached 20,000 unique users and 18,000 Facebook likes. (See 
Exhibit 3) The framework for the blog was a vision for Brazil’s future, one where cognitive health Do
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316-055 Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 
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would allow for citizens to be more productive members of society with a greater possibility of 
achieving equality, democracy, and a stable economy. “Investing in education produces a snowball 
effect,” explained Cardoso. “Greater learning results in citizens who are more autonomous, who have 
better professions across all sectors and opportunities to make choices.” Laboratório de Educação’s 
Assistant Coordinator Paulet Piedra noted that when they presented their portfolio of investment 
opportunities, most donors (Deutsche Bank, IBM, and an insurance foundation school, Funenseg) 
gravitated towards the blog because of its interactive digital platform. “The premise of the blog is to 
bring to light the small things that parents can do at home. It allows for families to participate in 
discussions and to subscribe to certain sections of the blog,” explained Paulet Piedra. 
The blog was divided into different sections so that users could readily identify their needs while 
browsing. The Te peguei section presented catchy phrases and rhymes for children to learn about the 
world around them. The O que não se vê section was a collection of images, videos, and written content 
meant to challenge caregivers to think about future possibilities for their child and to see beyond 
societal images. For example, a July 2015 blog post questioned why there were more male scientists 
than female and then presented blog users with a video compilation of young girls who were already 
building their own robots and contraptions.21 Eu me pergunto allowed parents and caregivers to ask 
questions that the blog writers and other users to get responses from as well. Com a palavra presented 
guest bloggers who are renowned in their fields to write their thoughts on early childhood learning, 
such as the effects of social inequities on cognitive development. The Curiosidades numéricas section 
explored how children develop quantitative skills and provided examples of how to motivate children 
to talk mathematically. The last section, Dicas, literally translates to mean “hints,” and allowed 
caregivers to search for ideas on games, books to use, trips to take, and films to watch with their child. 
Because Laboratório de Educação’s projects within the school sphere resulted in tangible products, 
Cardoso began to think about how to leverage the blog. “Our goal is totake Toda Criança and to make 
it into a tangible, not just a virtual, product,” explained Cardoso, citing that the materials they wanted 
to create would promote interaction between the adult and the learning child. 
Additional Partnerships 
On Brazil’s most famous television station (Globo TV), Laboratório de Educação showcased a three-
night mini series that adapted their virtual content from the Aprender Linguagem platform and reached 
millions during Fantástico, a Sunday night show with 40 million viewers. The show aired on television 
for three consecutive weeks with the purpose of “giving visibility to [Laboratório de Educação’s] 
mission and content,” through several important messages about early childhood language 
acquisition, said Paulet Piedra. 
Laboratório de Educação also established a partnership with the municipality of Franco da Rocha 
in late 2014 and the teacher-training materials based on Aprender Linguagem platform was implemented 
in the pedagogical gatherings of educators in nurseries and preschools throughout the city. “Since 
teachers do not often get to talk about their practice, this is innovative for Brazil and informative for us 
so we can adapt our resources to better serve our teachers,” said Paulet Piedra. 
In August 2015, the Laboratório de Educação announced that Brasil Post, the Huffington Post’s 
Brazil affiliate, decided to partner with the Toda Criança Pode Aprender blog in an effort to add to the 
existing rhetoric on early childhood education. This partnership was established with the hope of 
bringing greater visibility to the Laboratório de Educação’s work.22 Additionally, Cardoso published 
many articles in three well-known Brazilian newspapers. Do
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Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 316-055 
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Laboratório de Educação also established a partnership several other partnerships. In September 
2015, Catraca Livre23 (a growing social media company that connected people to a variety of resources) 
that was founded by Gilberto Dimenstein, a 2011 Advanced Leadership Fellow, partner with 
Laboratório de Educação.24 They also established many new pro-bono partnerships with other 
institutions like Ernst & Young (a multinational professional services firm) and Africa25 (a marketing 
Agency founded by Nizan Guanes). 
The Future of Laboratório de Educação 
Laboratório de Educação had many opportunities; for example, they planned to create a tool kit for 
caregivers that would have books, links, games, and other materials. They even heard requests from 
pediatricians who wanted helpful materials to give to their patients. 
 “We are still far from where we want to be. Kids benefit from good materials but it takes time to 
create them. We have also only been able to test our work in small groups because of the high cost,” 
said Cardoso. The online platform successfully reached unique visitors but Cardoso mentioned that, 
“people prefer books, something tangible,” therefore she focused on capitalizing on this as an Ashoka 
Senior Fellow in the Grow2Impact program. Cardoso recognized that tangible products could bring 
financial support to the organization and wondered what that would look like, given the organization’s 
history and mission. “Our projects won’t be large scale, I refuse to turn our work into a large 
enterprise,” she added. 
In December 2014, the Deutsche Bank Foundation decided to no longer support Laboratório de 
Educação’s work, something that Laboratório de Educação was prepared for financially. (See Exhibit 
4) “By then, we had already began a strategic planning process and established an interesting 
partnership with an institute that works closely with a school district in the state of Rio de Janeiro, 
where they committed to supporting us for three years,” elaborated Paulet Piedra. The organization 
reached a five year funding agreement of US$18,000 annually with Coca Cola Brazil around the same 
time. Cardoso decided to also expand the potential donor base to create what she called a “culture of 
philanthropy and donation” among Brazilians. The Laboratório de Educação participated in efforts 
such as Donor Day and Movimiento de Arredondar, where consumers could round up their purchases 
and the change went to nonprofit and NGOs. A more traditional example of this was a partnership 
with the Instituto João e Maria Backheuser, which supported a pilot intervention using Laboratório de 
Educação’s own materials in Casimiro de Abreu, Rio de Janeiro state in addition to US$130,000 
annually. 
Cardoso had learned much from CEDAC and had worked to discourage conflicts of interest by 
having outside organizations and donors support Laboratório de Educação’s existing projects, rather 
than creating their own. Still, she faced many questions as she continued to cultivate her vision for 
Brazil’s children. How could they increase their unrestricted funds for institutional support? Would 
this system be sustainable or will donors want more control over their projects? How deeply would 
the economic recession in Brazil affect Laboratório de Educação’s work? How will Laboratório de 
Educação become sustainable without succumbing to other organization’s interests? Was it sufficiently 
focused or too diffused, spreading efforts over too many projects? Was it important to build the 
Laboratório de Educação’s name and brand or simply focus on their individual products? How could 
they best capitalize on partnerships to educate children? Did they have the right partnerships in place? 
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316-055 Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 
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Exhibit 1 Aprender Linguagem Online Platform 
 
Source: www.aprenderlinguagem.org.br, accessed August 2015 - Portuguese and Spanish. 
 
Exhibit 2 Espaço de Leitura Online Platform 
 
Source: www.espacodeleitura.labedu.org.br, accessed August 2015. 
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or 617.783.7860
http://www.aprenderlinguagem.org.br/
http://www.espacodeleitura.labedu.org.br/
Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 316-055 
11 
Exhibit 3 Toda Criança Pode Aprender Blog 
 
Source: www.todacriancapodeaprender.org.br, www.facebook.com/todacrianca, accessed August 2015. 
 
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316-055 Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 
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Exhibit 4 2014 Financial Statements (Reais and USD) 
 
(In Reais) 
 
 
 
(In USD) 
Source: Company documents. 
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Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 316-055 
13 
Endnotes 
1 Rosabeth Moss Kanter, “Column: Think Outside the Building,” Harvard Business Review, March 2010. 
2 Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Pamela Yatsko, “Advanced Leadership in Public Education: Tools for Tackling Change from 
Outside the Building In,” Harvard Business School case number: 315019, January 13, 2015 
3 Época Negócios Online. “Brazil is the 8th Largest Economy,” Globo, March 29, 2013 [http://epocanegocios.globo.com/ 
Revista/Common/0,,EMI129660-16357,00-BRASIL+E+A+OITAVA+MAIOR+ECONOMIA+MUNDIAL.html,]accessed July 
2015 
4 United Nations Development Programme. “The rise of the south: Human Progress in a Diverse World,” Human 
Development Report 2013, [http://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/Country-Profiles/BRA.pdf] accessed July 2015 
5 Christopher Hope. “Transparency International's 2009 corruption index: the full ranking of 180 countries,” The Telegraph, 
November 17, 2009, 
[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6589735/Transparency-Internationals-2009-corruption-
index-the-full-ranking-of-180-countries.html,] accessed July 2015 
6 GINI Index, The World Bank, [http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI], accessed July 2015. 
7 Ibid. 
8 “Brazilian waxing and waning,” The Economist, June 5, 2015. 
[http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2015/03/economic-backgrounder], accessed July 2015. 
9 Bourcier, Nicolas. “Brazil’s economy falters, but worse may be to come,” The Guardian, June 9, 2015. 
[http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/09/brazil-economy-falters-welfare-cuts], accessed July 2015. 
10 OECD, “Education at a Glance 2013: Brazil,” (PDF File), downloaded from the OECD website, 
[http://www.oecd.org/edu/Brazil_EAG2013percent20Countrypercent20Note.pdf], accessed July 2015. 
11 Ibid. 
12 Ibid. 
13 Rapoza, Kenneth. “In Brazil, Protesting Teachers Get Lesson in Police Brutality,” Forbes, May 1, 2015. 
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/05/01/in-brazil-protesting-teachers-get-lesson-in-police-brutality/], 
accessed July 2015. 
14 Ibid. 
15 “Brazil Teacher Strike in Sao Paulo State Ends,” BBC, June 13, 2015. [http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-
33120843], accessed July 2015. 
16Ferreiro, Emilia, and Ana Teberosky. Literacy Before Schooling. Exeter, N.H: Heinemann Educational Books, 1982. 
17 Instituto Natura, “Trilhas,” (PDF File), downloaded from the UNDIME website, [http://undime.org.br/wp-
content/uploads/2012/05/Trilhas-karina-Rizek-Instituto-Natura.pdf], accessed July 2015. 
18 Rosabeth Moss Kanter, “From Spare Change to Real Change: The Social Sector as Beta Site for Business Innovation” Harvard 
Business Review, May-June 1999 issue, https://hbr.org/1999/05/from-spare-change-to-real-change-the-social-sector-as-beta-
site-for-business-innovation, accessed November 2015 
19 Rosabeth Moss Kanter, “Adopt a Cow: Strategy as Improvisational Theater” Harvard Business Review, October 12, 2010, 
https://hbr.org/2010/10/adopt-a-cow-strategy-as-improv.html, accessed November 2015 
20 Indiegogo, “Aprender a Estudar Learning Platform,” https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aprender-a-estudar-a-learning-
platform-for-better-teaching--2#/story, accessed July 2015. 
21 “ Por que há mais cientistas homens do que mulheres,“ Sim, Toda Criança Pode Aprender (blog), July 8, 2015 
[http://www.todacriancapodeaprender.org.br/por-que-ha-mais-cientistas-homens-do-que-mulheres-o-que-esta-por-tras-
deste-fato/] , accessed July 2015. 
 
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or 617.783.7860
http://epocanegocios.globo.com/Revista/Common/0,,EMI129660-16357,00-BRASIL+E+A+OITAVA+MAIOR+ECONOMIA+MUNDIAL.html
http://epocanegocios.globo.com/Revista/Common/0,,EMI129660-16357,00-BRASIL+E+A+OITAVA+MAIOR+ECONOMIA+MUNDIAL.html
file:///C:/Users/aimalone/Documents/Catraca%20Livre/Christopher%20Hope.%20“Transparency%20International's%202009%20corruption%20index:%20the%20full%20ranking%20of%20180%20countries,”%20The%20Telegraph,%20November%2017,%202009,http:/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6589735/Transparency-Internationals-2009-corruption-index-the-full-ranking-of-180-countries.html
file:///C:/Users/aimalone/Documents/Catraca%20Livre/Christopher%20Hope.%20“Transparency%20International's%202009%20corruption%20index:%20the%20full%20ranking%20of%20180%20countries,”%20The%20Telegraph,%20November%2017,%202009,http:/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6589735/Transparency-Internationals-2009-corruption-index-the-full-ranking-of-180-countries.html
file:///C:/Users/aimalone/Documents/Catraca%20Livre/Christopher%20Hope.%20“Transparency%20International's%202009%20corruption%20index:%20the%20full%20ranking%20of%20180%20countries,”%20The%20Telegraph,%20November%2017,%202009,http:/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6589735/Transparency-Internationals-2009-corruption-index-the-full-ranking-of-180-countries.html
file:///C:/Users/aimalone/Documents/Catraca%20Livre/Christopher%20Hope.%20“Transparency%20International's%202009%20corruption%20index:%20the%20full%20ranking%20of%20180%20countries,”%20The%20Telegraph,%20November%2017,%202009,http:/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/6589735/Transparency-Internationals-2009-corruption-index-the-full-ranking-of-180-countries.html
http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.GINI
https://hbr.org/1999/05/from-spare-change-to-real-change-the-social-sector-as-beta-site-for-business-innovation
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https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aprender-a-estudar-a-learning-platform-for-better-teaching--2#/story
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/aprender-a-estudar-a-learning-platform-for-better-teaching--2#/story
316-055 Beatriz Cardoso and Education in Brazil 
14 
 
22 Brasil Post, “Toda Criança Pode Aprender,” http://www.brasilpost.com.br/toda-crianca-pode-aprender/ , accessed July 
2015. 
23 Kanter Rosabeth Moss, Naghirniac Alexandre, Malone Ai-Ling Jamila. Advanced Leadership Pathways: Gilberto 
Dimenstein Opens Connections in Brazil. 2013; (N9-313-116). 
24 Catraca Livre Press Release, “Quatro respostas aos mitos sobre a adoção de crianças por casais homossexuais,” September, 
21, 2015, https://catraquinha.catracalivre.com.br/geral/familia/indicacao/quatro-respostas-aos-mitos-sobre-a-adocao-de-
criancas-por-casais-homossexuais/, accessed November 2015 
25 Kanter, Rosabeth Moss, Gustavo Herrero, and Ricardo Reisen De Pinho. "Grupo ABC and Nizan Guanaes's Path from Brazil 
to the World." Harvard Business School Case 313-095, March 2013. 
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https://catraquinha.catracalivre.com.br/geral/familia/indicacao/quatro-respostas-aos-mitos-sobre-a-adocao-de-criancas-por-casais-homossexuais/
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