Guilherme Peirão Leal (born in Santos on 22 February 1950) is a Brazilian businessman, social and environmental entrepreneur, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder of Natura Cosméticos (currently Natura &Co), one of the biggest beauty groups in the world, and currently co-chairs the Board of Directors of the company in which he holds an 11% stake and is a member of the board of Instituto Natura, which aims to improve Brazil’s public education system.
Over the last decades, Leal has become an investor in high-impact businesses, dedicating his time to the creation of a series of social organizations, such as the Abrinq Foundation for the Rights of Children and Adolescents, Ethos Institute for Business and Social Responsibility, and Akatu Institute for Conscious Consumption. In 2017, he co-founded the chocolate brand Dengo, which uses high quality cocoa produced by small family farmers in southern Bahia. He is also a member of the B Team, a group of global leaders who are driving better ways of doing business.
With a brief career in politics, Leal was the vice president candidate running with Marina Silva in the 2010 presidential election, for the Green Party (PV). They received over 20 million votes.
Biography
Guilherme Leal was born in Santos (SP) in 1950. He is the youngest of four siblings and father of two. He holds a degree in Business Management from the University of São Paulo.
Leal worked in financial institutions and at Ferrovia Paulista S.A. (Fepasa). In 1979, after leaving Fepasa, he became a partner at Natura, when it was a small cosmetics shop located at Rua Oscar Freire, in São Paulo.
Alongside his partners, Luiz Seabra and Pedro Passos, Leal turned Natura into one of the biggest cosmetics companies in the world and a reference in sustainability. From the trio of founders, Leal was the one at the head of the initiative to invest in nature preservation and sustainable development, making the company adopt Brazilian biodiversity as a tool for cosmetics innovation and awareness about the Amazon.
The company established itself in the country’s northern region in the early 2000s, when it introduced Ekos, a cosmetics line based on the use of ingredients from Brazilian biodiversity. Carbon neutral since 2007, the company created a program to channel investments into the Amazon in 2011. Natura has become a case study not just for using raw material extracted from the native forest, but also for doing so while valuing and rewarding forest communities. For Leal, “companies must be agents that promote broad transformation in society and not mere means of wealth generation (...). The value and longevity of any business are connected to their ability to contribute to the evolution of society and its sustainable development.”
The businessman currently splits his time between philanthropic activities, other businesses, and investments, such as Dengo and Natura, where he has been co-chairman of the Board of Directors since 1998. Due to his work on sustainability, Leal is featured in the book Conversas com Líderes Sustentáveis (“Conversations with Sustainable Leaders”), in which he shares experiences and social and environmental stories.
In 2006, when Leal was included on the Forbes list of billionaires, his net worth was estimated at USD 1.4 billion. Four years later, he was part of the group of 18 Brazilians on the list with a net worth of USD 2.1 billion.
Philanthropy
In addition to being the founder and former president of the Ethos Institute, created to help companies run their business in a socially responsible manner, Leal also participated in the creation and was a member of the board of the Abrinq Foundation, whose goal is to mobilize society for issues related to the defense of the rights of children and adolescents. He was a member of the board of WWF-Brazil and the Brazilian Biodiversity Fund (Funbio). In 2007, he co-founded the Our São Paulo Movement, whose objective is to organize several sectors of local society to create a better, fairer, more sustainable city. Leal usually says that “the new generation of philanthropists wants to deal with problem causes, not just their consequences.”
Arapyaú Institute
In 2008, the businessman founded Institute Arapyaú, a non-profit organization focused on the sustainable development of the economy, the environment, politics, and society. The institution identifies opportunities and voluntarily channels funds and strategic resources to organizations, networks, and projects engaged in promoting sustainable development.