International Council

Marly Winckler

Brazil · Councillor since 2000 · Chair 2011–2014 and 2018–2025 · Honorary President since 2025

Sociologist and translator. Founder of the Brazilian Vegetarian Society, organiser of the first IVU World Vegetarian Congress held in Latin America, and the longest-serving chair in the organisation’s recent history.

 

• Member of the International Council 2000 –
• Regional Representative, Latin America and the Caribbean 2000 – 2016
• Chair of the International Vegetarian Union 2011 – 2014
• Chair of the International Vegetarian Union 2018 – 2025
• Honorary President 2025 –

Marly Winckler was born on 5 November 1954 in Cunha Porã, in the west of Santa Catarina, southern Brazil. She graduated in Social Sciences from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul in 1982 and took a postgraduate specialisation in translation at PUC-Rio. She became vegetarian in 1983, through Theosophical thought, and vegan in 1995, after the 8th International Vegan Festival in San Diego.

In 1997 she created the Sítio Vegetariano, the first website dedicated to vegetarianism in the Portuguese language, together with the Veg-Brasil and Veg-Latina discussion lists — the first of their kind in Portuguese and in Spanish. The network those lists created became, in 2003, the Sociedade Vegetariana Brasileira, which she founded and led as president until 2015. From it came the Meat Free Monday campaign, which reached two million school meals a day in São Paulo, the Vegan Seal certification programme and the Vegan Option Programme — all conceived by her and built with volunteers.

She joined the IVU International Council in 2000 as Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, a post she held until 2016. In 2004 she organised the 36th IVU World Vegetarian Congress in Florianópolis, the first ever held in Latin America, with participants of 32 nationalities and an entirely vegan programme. She was elected Chair in 2011 — the first Brazilian and the third woman in the post — serving until 2014 and again from 2018 to 2025, when she handed the chairmanship to Rune-Christoffer Dragsdahl. Her chairmanship coordinated the IVU Vegan Nutrition Guide for Adults and pushed the organisation beyond the Europe-centred body it had been for most of its first century.

Alongside this she has translated more than seventy books into Portuguese, among them Peter Singer’s Animal Liberation (2003) and the Collected Writings of H. P. Blavatsky. She has travelled to more than sixty countries, speaks Portuguese, English and Spanish, and lives in Florianópolis.