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Meet the Team
Luciana Lage - Founder & InstructorDrawing on her passion for Brazilian Portuguese language and culture, Luciana applies her many years of experience teaching Portuguese to grow an organization and a community that is fully engaged in learning about Brazil and speaking the language. Aside from teaching at Street Smart Brazil, Luciana also gives classes at UC Berkeley.
You will often find Luciana talking with the Street Smart Brazil instructors about the importance of teaching the language and acting as ambassadors of the culture. She is positive that learning Portuguese will benefit students far beyond simple everyday communication and will help them develop more meaningful relationships with Brazilian people and culture. For Luciana herself, teaching Portuguese is a magical process of falling in love again and again with everything Brazilian.
Luciana’s students come from all walks of life and different cultural backgrounds, including the U.S., Japan, Colombia, Peru, Argentina, and Vietnam. When teaching, she can identify -- and overcome -- the challenges faced by students of varying nationalities.
Luciana’s educational background includes a Bachelor in Business from the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Brazil, an MBA from San Francisco State University, and professional coaching training also from San Francisco State. Her passion for learning and sharing knowledge also led Luciana to teach business to undergraduate students in Brazil. Her business experience is perfectly integrated into Portuguese classes, as more and more students decide to learn Portuguese motivated by professional goals. |
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Renata Barboza-Murray - InstructorRenata was born and raised in Pernambuco, in Northeastern Brazil. She has been living is San Francisco-CA since 2006. She is Street Smart Brazil's right hand with her dedication to teaching and ability to create class materials and train the teachers.
Renata has a BA in Translation (English-Portuguese) and a certificate from a specialization course in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages). She has been teaching both English and Portuguese as a second language for more than 9 years. Renata believes that learning happens when the emotional, right side of your brain and the logical, left side of your brain work together. Her students range from 3 to 70 years old. In Brazil, she worked as a Portuguese as a second language teacher at the American School of Recife. Her students were from many parts of the world including the U.S., Argentina, Mexico, Bolivia, Japan, China, and Finland.
“Every day my students’ enthusiasm and motivation to learn Portuguese show me the beauty and richness of the Portuguese language and Brazilian culture.” |
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Larissa Garcia - Instructor & Aula Viva PartnerLarissa is an actress, comedienne, and Brazilian Portuguese instructor born and raised in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil. She holds a bachelor’s degree in both Drama (Federal University of Bahia) and Language (Salvador University), and has been teaching Brazilian Portuguese for 7 years while working as a stage actor for the past 16 years.
After landing in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, she decided to combine acting and teaching and happily found that it really works. Bringing to life characters and situations from Brazilian daily life and culture has proved an effective method of instruction.
Larissa is also the director of Taba Productions and has recently produced and performed three solo shows: Billie Cox's A (Bearded) Lady, Mario Echevarrias’ Memoirs of a Virgin and Dario Fo & Franca Rami's Medea Prologue (as a result of Climate Theaters Artist Residency Program), being awarded best actress for the first two pieces. She is thrilled to be working with both acting and teaching. Taba and Street Smart Brazil have partnered to create Aula Viva, a theatrical workshop on Brazilian Portuguese.
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Vanessa Agra - InstructorVanessa is Brazilian and has been living in San Francisco, CA since 2000. She graduated in Psychology in Brazil, and was an elementary school teacher before moving to the United States. While living in Brazil, Vanessa accumulated six years of experience teaching Portuguese and other subjects to 1st- 4th graders. She has never stopped teaching Portuguese as a second language because of the joy and fun she always finds in the process of seeing someone open up his/her ears and mind into a different language.
Vanessa loves the language learning process in general, and recognizes that while it is incredibly gratifying to learn a language, it is also very challenging and requires hard work. She believes that learning a foreign language means much more than achieving the most obvious result which is to communicate; but also, and maybe most importantly, it means to expose one’s consciousness to a diverse point of view, a foreign way to see life and the world. It broadens one’s belief system, and polishes his/her ability to make judgments in life. |
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Betania Bezerra - InstructorBetania found out about her passion for the Portuguese language while attending middle school in her hometown of Porto Alegre, in the southernmost state of Brazil. During Portuguese classes she was fascinated by her native tongue while most of her classmates despised sitting through an entire grammar class. Betania realized not only that she had fallen in love with the Portuguese language, but that she was proficient at it.
Betania was born and raised in a city that has a strong cultural tradition so she enjoyed a diversity of activities like book readings and theater plays. In addition, her mother used to be a Social Sciences teacher so Betania became attracted to Brazilian folklore very early on.
Betania has been living in San Francisco-CA since 2000. The diversity of people and cultures in America helped her realize how proud she was of her own ethnicity and how she enjoyed sharing it with everybody.
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Dalva Rodrigues - Instructor
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Tatiana Dutra e Mello - InstructorTatiana Dutra e Mello is a native Brazilian who is interested in language, arts, and music. She comes from a family of teachers and fondly recalls helping her grandmother who taught illiterate adults, and aiding her own mother by correcting student’s assignments on the weekends. In other words, she was a Teaching Assistant in training back then!
She later pursued a Bachelor in Social Communication and studied Graphic Design, which is one of her creative outlets. An avid reader and very interested in languages, she has worked on translation projects and has been helping students to learn her native Portuguese for over two years.
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Jaqueline Jacques - InstructorJaqueline spent her childhood and adolescence in Porto Alegre. While growing up, she always knew that she wanted to travel overseas, and it indeed happened in 1988, when she packed her bags and landed in San Francisco.
Eventually, Jaqueline went back to school and received a Bachelor's in Liberal Arts, with emphasis in International Relations from San Francisco State University, and a Translation and Interpretation Certificate from the University of California, Berkeley. Her love of language and teaching was ever present. She always felt happier when she was assisting her friends writing letters in English or Portuguese, or teaching Portuguese for those who wanted to travel to Brazil. Eventually she started working with the Portuguese language. With her certificate in translation and interpretation Jaqueline was exactly where she wanted to be. In addition, she became a volunteer in a storytelling project to maintain Brazilian culture and language amongst immigrant children.
“I hope I can share the excitement and delight I feel when I am teaching not only Portuguese but another entirely different culture. Learning a second language is something that will challenge your mind and fulfill your soul.”
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