Vera Thorstensen is a professor at the School of Economics from the Getulio Vargas Foundation and Head of the Center on Global Trade and Investments. She was the economic advisor of the Mission of Brazil to the WTO from 1995 to 2010 and was Chair of the WTO Committee of Rules of Origin for seven years. 

She is the WTO Chair Holder in Brazil and the President of the Brazilian Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade Committee, a governmental body under the National Council on Metrology, Standardization and Industrial Quality of the Ministry of Industry, Foreign Trade and Services (Conmetro-MDIC) since 2014. 

She was an invited professor at Sciences-Po, IELPO-Barcelona, IEE-Lisbon, where she lectured on Trade Negotiations. 

She has a Master and Doctoral Degrees in Finance and Economics by EAESP-FGV and completed post-doctoral programs at Harvard (EUA) and Centre for European Policy Studies (Bruxelas) and was a Visiting Scholar at the Interamerican Development Bank (Washington).