Senior Fellow at the Brazilian Center of International Relations (CEBRI). Vera Thorstensen is a Professor at the School of Economics at the Getulio Vargas Foundation, in São Paulo, and Head of the Center on Global Trade and Investments. She is the WTO Chair Holder in Brazil.

She was President of the Brazilian Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade, a governmental body under the National Council on Metrology, Standardization and Industrial Quality (Conmetro-MDIC) from 2014-2018. Dr. Thorstensen was the Economic Advisor of the WTO Brazil Mission from 1995 to 2010 and was Chair of the WTO Committee of Rules of Origin for seven years.

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 University and the Centre for European Policy Studies (Brussels), and was a Visiting Scholar at the Interamerican Development Bank.