Jose was born and raised in Ribeirão Preto, in the countryside of São Paulo state, Brazil. Although he grew up on the outskirts of the city, it was because of the local public school that he had contact with an outside world he did not know existed. He started studying English, Spanish, and French. He had contact with music classes, theater, cinema, sports, and literature. Besides, his mother had a small stationery shop, and he helped take care of it by working as a salesperson. Those years of work experience in the local shop and various projects run by the school at such a young age made him a very open, communicative, and hard-working person.

At the age of 18, he was preparing himself for the university exams in Brazil, and he also started a job as a waiter on the weekends to make money for his first international experience. In Madrid, he lived with a local family and took practical Spanish classes. The passion for that new world he was discovering and the experience of living in a foreign country with different people, languages, and cultures influenced him to study the field of International Relations. In order to get more involved with Spanish, he chose a bilingual university to study at: the Brazilian Federal University of Latin American Integration (Unila). Unila is a unique Brazilian education project. It is a bilingual project that brings students and professors from all parts of Latin America to study and teach at the University. It aims to integrate Latin America through education, culture, science, and technology. So, Jose moved to Foz do Iguacu, on the border of Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil, where the university is located. During this period, he focused his studies on Latin America, regional integration, and foreign policy analysis. Learning the reality of the region and participating in all different experiences, such as studying indigenous languages, knowing more about Latin American social movements, and thinking about International Relations from a Latin American perspective. At the same time, he also visited all of Latin America, staying with his friends at the university and experiencing all that he studied in the books. Countries he never imagined he would visit, such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, for example. Having great experiences like spending time with the Kuna communities isolated on the islands of Panama.

In 2012, he started working as a volunteer for the international organization AIESEC. AIESEC is a global organization run by volunteer students interested in world issues, leadership, and management. Besides bringing international students to work on local projects in Foz do Iguacu, Jose took part in one project abroad as well. In 2013, he went volunteering in the countryside of Togo, in the West African region. In Togo, he was part of the Rural Life project. The project was located in a rural village called Yobozdro. In that village, he taught English to kids in the school, built a volleyball field, and participated in talks about health and the environment with the community.

After finishing the bachelor’s degree, Jose took one year to travel, doing volunteer work and, in the end, saving money before going back to Brazil. He lived for a while on a farm in Jänkendorf, Germany, to learn German. On that farm, there was a project of permaculture that aimed to grow crops in a more sustainable and environmentally friendly way. On that project, Jose really learned way more than German; he used to work taking care of sheep, feeding animals, working on crops, building things, and fixing bicycles. After some period, he left the farm to visit some countries in Europe, and later he went to work for a while in the United States. In the United States, he lived for 6 months in Cape Cod (Massachusetts), working on landscaping during the summer period to save money to go back to Brazil and fulfill a dream: to become a diplomat.

In 2019, back in Brazil, he started his studies for the diplomacy test in Brazil, and at the same time, he started his master’s degree. He studied at the Institute of International Relations of the University of São Paulo (USP). His research was about the Union of South American Nations (Unasur), mapping players in the process of creation and the decline of the regional organism, and identifying how political polarization played an important role in the process. At USP, Jose learned more about statistics, data science, and software programs such as R and Stata, applying all of that to the international relations field.

In recent years, Jose has pursued the Brazilian diplomatic career, studying all fields related to the career: International Law, Geography, Economy, History, International Politics, Literature, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and English. In 2021, he moved to Italy to apply for his Italian citizenship because he has Italian roots in the family. Nowadays, Jose lives in the Rome region. He learned Italian, and he works for a multinational organization on an IT project. Besides, he also contributes to the Economist Intelligence Unit. In his free time, he likes to go running, swimming, and studying chess.