Leonel Lisboa is a consultant and co-head of Löning Academy. 

Leonel is an experienced lawyer from Brazil specialising in international law and human rights. With over a decade of experience in both the public and private sectors, Leonel has worked extensively with international direct investments in natural resources, including projects in Brazil’s Amazon region. For the past six years, he has worked directly on business and human rights issues both as a consultant and as an in-house professional. For over four years, he has served as Legal Human Rights Expert at Vale, a Brazilian-headquartered multinational mining company. At Vale, he coordinated Human Rights Impact Assessments (HRIAs) across more than 40 mines, ports, railways, and roads in Brazil and Oman, overseeing a team of 15 consultants.

Leonel played a pivotal role in the emergency response to the 2019 Brumadinho dam collapse disaster, contributing to the design of reparation measures. Additionally, he has coordinated human rights risk assessments and mitigation strategies for Vale’s non-Brazilian operations and projects, including supermajority joint ventures. In his earlier career, Leonel served as a political adviser on international human rights at the state level, conducting training and negotiations related to human rights and torture prevention.

As a researcher at the Facts and Norms Institute, he has contributed to United Nations Special Procedures on Business and Human Rights and on Sanctions. At the Institute, he co-coordinates the InterAmerican Observatory of Human Rights.

Leonel holds a master’s degree in International Human Rights Law, is currently pursuing a PhD in International Law, Human Rights, and Just Transition, and has several academic publications on these topics.

He is a native Portuguese speaker, fluent in English, and has a working knowledge of French.