Power Woman Dilma Rousseff: Brazil's Entrepreneur-In-Chief

This story appears in the September 10, 2012 issue of Forbes.

"... Brazil has become one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world, with one in four adults self-employed in some manner. Small businesses create two out of three jobs in Rousseff’s private sector–Brazil’s unemployment rate is an envious 5.8%–and 49% of entrepreneurs with companies less than 42 months old are women; the global average is 37%. In bustling São Paulo alone, 1.8 million small-business owners ply their trades, wares and ideas.

Technology has been a game changer. According to Nielsen, Brazil had 82.4 million Internet users in the first quarter of 2012 compared with 62.3 million three years earlier. On Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter Brazilians are the second most active social network users behind the U.S. “Technology is democratizing entrepreneurialism,” says Bedy Yang, the founder of Brazilian Innovators, an organization helping young tech entrepreneurs. “There are 200 million people in Brazil and 250 million mobile devices.” --

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