- New stadium gives Real Madrid a headache
- Alonso, Manaea shine as 'Miracle Mets' blitz Phillies
- Harris, Trump trade blows in US election media blitz
- Harry's Bar in Paris drinks to US straw-poll centenary
- Osama bin Laden's son Omar banned from returning to France
- Afghan man arrested for plotting US election day attack
- Brazil lifts ban on Musk's X, ending standoff over disinformation
- Harris holds slight edge nationally over Trump: poll
- Chelsea edge Real Madrid in Women's Champions League, Lyon win
- Japan PM to dissolve parliament for 'honeymoon' snap election
- 'Diego Lives': Immersive Maradona exhibit hits Barcelona
- Brazil Supreme Court lifts ban on Musk's X
- Scientists sound AI alarm after winning physics Nobel
- Six-year-old girl among missing after Brazil landslide
- Nobel-winning physicist 'unnerved' by AI technology he helped create
- Mexico president rules out new 'war on drugs'
- Israeli defense minister postpones trip to Washington: Pentagon
- Europe skipper Donald in talks with Garcia over Ryder return
- Kenya MPs vote to impeach deputy president in historic move
- Former US coach Berhalter named Chicago Fire head coach
- New York Jets fire head coach Saleh: team
- Australia crush New Zealand in Women's T20 World Cup
- US states accuse TikTok of harming young users
- 'Evacuate now, now, now': Florida braces for next hurricane
- US Supreme Court skeptical of challenge to 'ghost guns' regulation
- Sparks fly as Orban berates EU 'elites' in parliament trip
- US finalizes rule to remove lead pipes within a decade
- Solanke hungry for second England cap after seven-year wait
- Gilded canopy restored at Vatican basilica
- Zverev scrapes through, Djokovic cruises to Shanghai Masters last 16
- Trump secretly sent Covid tests to Putin: Bob Woodward book
- Gauff answers critics: 'It's hard to win all the time'
- Neural networks, machine learning? Nobel-winning AI science explained
- China says raised 'serious concerns' with US over trade curbs
- Boeing delivers 27 MAX jets in September despite strike
- German 'Maddie' suspect could be free in 2025 after cleared of other sex crimes
- Italy seek Nations League consistency as Germany continue rebuild
- From boom to budgeting as reality bites for Saudi football
- Stock markets diverge as Hong Kong sinks, oil prices fall
- US trade gap narrowest in five months as imports slip
- Stay and 'you are going to die': Florida braces for next hurricane
- England 96-1 after Salman's century lifts Pakistan to 556
- Hollywood star Idris Elba champions African cinema in Ghana
- Djokovic rolls Cobolli to make Shanghai Masters last 16
- Milan's Hernandez receives two-game suspension after referee rant
- Geoffrey Hinton, soft-spoken godfather of AI
- Ex-Barcelona and Spain great Iniesta retires aged 40
- Duo wins Physics Nobel for 'foundational' AI breakthroughs
- German 'Maddie' suspect could be free in 2025 after cleared of separate sex crimes
- China slaps provisional tariffs on EU brandy imports
Billionaire Luiza Trajano, the businesswoman shaking up Brazil
Brazilian businesswoman Luiza Trajano has made it onto a lot of lists: TIME's most influential people, Forbes' billionaires, the biggest fortunes in Brazil...
But although she has been touted as a potential contender in Brazil's presidential elections this year, there is one list she says she is determined to stay off: the ballot.
With the country deeply polarized ahead of October's polls, "I want to unite Brazil," not divide it further, says the 73-year-old entrepreneur, who made her fortune building her family store, Magazine Luiza, into one of Latin America's biggest online retailers.
Not that Trajano, a household name in Brazil, is shying from the spotlight as the race heats up between far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and his nemesis, leftist ex-president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Known for her trailblazing work promoting women's equality, fighting racial discrimination and pushing to speed up Brazil's vaccination campaign against Covid-19, Trajano says she remains engaged as ever in this clutch election year.
"I want to take Brazil where I think it should be, where I think it deserves to be," she told AFP in an interview.
"I want to end these deep divisions that are causing the country a lot of harm," said the elegantly dressed businesswoman, a forceful speaker with an imposing personality offset by her contagious laugh and bright red lipstick.
- 'Different' odyssey -
Plenty of Brazilians would like to see Trajano get into politics.
With the business sector and political middle desperately seeking centrist alternatives to Lula and Bolsonaro, her name was floated as a potential "third-way" candidate.
There was also talk Lula could ask her to be his running mate.
"I've been invited plenty of times (to run), including for president," Trajano said.
But she added she doesn't want labels, beyond the ones she already has: chair of the board at Magalu, as her company is popularly known, and president of Women of Brazil, her 100,000-member empowerment initiative.
"I'm nonpartisan, but political," she said.
That has not stopped Bolsonaro from attacking her as a "socialist businesswoman."
Lula has meanwhile sung her praises.
When TIME named Trajano to its list of 100 most influential people last year, the ex-president (2003-2010) wrote the magazine's blurb on her.
"In a world where billionaires burn their fortunes on space adventures and yachts, Luiza is dedicated to a different kind of odyssey... building a commercial giant while constructing a better Brazil," waxed the Workers' Party (PT) founder.
But Trajano wants to be clear: The PT has "never" asked her to run for office, she said.
- Salesgirl to chairwoman -
Trajano grew up the only child of a modest family in the city of Franca, in southeastern Brazil.
She started working at 12 during school vacation, helping out at the household goods store founded in 1957 by her aunt, also named Luiza.
"I had the fortune to come from a family of women entrepreneurs, who believed in the power of women at a time when most women didn't work outside the home," said Trajano.
She took the helm in 1991, and soon turned the business into one of the biggest retail chains in Brazil, with nearly 1,500 stores, and an e-commerce pioneer.
"I've broken a lot of beliefs that limited me," said Trajano.
"I love doing that."
- No slowing down -
Trajano rejects Bolsonaro's label of "socialist." But paradoxically, the fifth-richest woman in Brazil, whose fortune is estimated at $1.4 billion, says she is no fan of capitalism either, calling it "savage."
She prefers to focus on ways to better society.
When Covid-19 hit Brazil hard and Bolsonaro flouted expert advice on containing it, Trajano mobilized a campaign called "United for the Vaccine" that rallied private-sector support for the public-health system.
Seeking to fight structural racism in Brazil, she launched a trainee program at Magazine Luiza in 2020 to recruit promising black employees -- drawing both applause and criticism.
Now she is setting her sights on including more women in politics.
Women currently hold just 15 percent of seats in Brazil's Congress. Trajano wants them to hold half.
She won't run herself -- but she's not slowing down, either.
"I change cycles, but I'll never retire," she said.
D.Moore--AMWN