PLURES

Who we are

The people behind Plures.

Portrait of Lucas O. Souza

Lucas O. Souza

Lucas has spent two decades moving between frontier technology and public institutions. He was a principal researcher at Numenta, where he led the team that trained large language models, and earlier built data intelligence systems for Brazil's federal anti-corruption office. A lifelong educator, he has mentored hundreds of engineers, built machine-learning communities in the Bay Area and Brazil, and founded Derivada, a nonprofit advancing AI education in Brazil.

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Portrait of Ettore Arpini

Ettore Arpini

Ettore brings a decade of experience in strategy and management roles across all four continents, transforming research and coalition-building into national and global policy. He was a Director of Strategy and Impact at the World Resources Institute, a 2500 staff and $500M annual budget climate think tank. He founded and exited Drexfy, a blockchain fintech that partnered with regulators in Europe and Brazil to connect impactful projects in Latin America to investors in Europe.

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Portrait of Mary Helen Wood

Mary Helen Wood

Mary Helen has a background in operations and program management in the international sustainable development sector. She has a joint master's degree from Oxford's Department of International Development and School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography. Her research has explored the role of international organizations as “norm entrepreneurs” and clearinghouses for national and subnational policy in the Global South.

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Portrait of Egerton Neto

Egerton Neto

Egerton Neto works on AI governance and on building the institutions that connect research to policy. He was a founding member and Head of Programs at the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE), helping grow it from an Oxford project into an independent global science organization in Zurich that coordinates hundreds of researchers. His work there covered AI accountability, climate misinformation, and digital governance. Before that, he managed the Democracy & Technology program at the Oxford Internet Institute and worked at Brazil's Ministry of Culture. He has advised the UN, UNESCO, and Brazil's Supreme Court, and has written for Project Syndicate and El País.

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