A Brazilian writer on regulation sets out why the people affected should carry their demands to the regulators, and what he watches in new materials and in health.
The demands people make of regulators are getting more scattered, across time and across place, and more specific. Rodrigo Contrera doesn’t think a central power can answer them all. In the current context, which he calls “so exacerbated and radicalized,” he sees no point in demanding that it try.
His answer is to move the authority over those demands to the people they affect. Empowered that way, he says, those people can go to the regulatory machinery themselves and ask for solutions to needs that keep becoming more specific.
Rodrigo writes about regulation in two fields. He’s a columnist at The QA/RA Week, where he covers regulatory aspects of the health sector, and an informal contributor to the newsletter of AI & Partners, an initiative on the use and regulation of artificial intelligence. He’s based in Taboão da Serra, São Paulo, and he’s also involved in real estate, with an emphasis on construction technologies and sustainability.
An Idea Developed Over Time
Rodrigo is plain about where the idea stands. “My central idea is not new, I believe, but I only developed it over time,” he says. One of his latest posts, on micro-regulation and its advantages, reads to him as almost consensual.
He sets the idea against two fields he studied. Philosophy, in his view, remains trapped in dilemmas that rest on impractical concepts, party democracy among them. Political science, he says, remains trapped in disappointing realities, such as fulfilling ideological demands.
“To me, regulating is not necessarily legislating with an emphasis on approval, but rather addressing demands based on feasible criteria.”
Rodrigo Contrera, columnist, The QA/RA Week
Both of those are fields he trained in.
Where the Work Comes From
Rodrigo holds a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from the University of São Paulo (USP). He also studied political science there, with normative theory as his specialization, and journalism is his original field of study, along with philosophy. He told us his involvement with the sector and with regulatory activities “is not new, and ultimately stems from my academic background decades ago.”
Today the work runs through his columns. The one at The QA/RA Week began in July 2026, and he also contributes to the AI & Partners newsletter. A recent post of his, though, put an open question to his network about a different subject, composite materials.
New Materials
In that post, Rodrigo asked about cost, shelf life, manual application and chemical waste in composites. Asked which of those decides whether a material gets used, he didn’t pick one. In practice, he says, the factors combine in the use of raw materials, and their relative importance “varies greatly depending on the component and the market being targeted.” It is the combined advantages of composites that make them competitive, he says, “rather than just one feature or another standing out.”
On regulating new materials, he gives critics some ground. That regulatory caution reduces a new material’s attractiveness is real “in a sense,” he says, but he finds “a certain exaggeration” in the claim. His reason is about tracking. Without limits on the scope of use for certain materials, they become virtually impossible to track and analyze by minimally acceptable technical criteria.
“…it is good for everyone to establish clear focus areas for certain materials rather than letting them loose in the market without critical monitoring.”
Rodrigo, columnist, The QA/RA Week
Leaving them unmonitored could also be, in his words, “a bit too risky depending on the demands of the market or the segments served.” The same question, how much rule a sector needs, runs through his writing on health.
Health Regulation in Brazil
Brazil’s healthcare sector, Rodrigo says, is already heavily regulated, and many of its regulations are still questioned, debated and criticized, often sharply and, in his words, “to some extent unfruitful.” Some of the news that borders on scandal comes from poor medical training, he says, “not because of normative failures, but because reality ultimately exceeds the capacity to prevent certain extremely delicate situations.”
He says he holds “no particularly radical interest either in new regulations or in challenging existing ones.”
“My interest lies in promoting Brazilian normative work as broadly as possible, both domestically and abroad, to foster the maturation of our critical capacity and civic oversight.”
Rodrigo, columnist, The QA/RA Week
The topics he follows are the ones in the news. He lists weight-loss pens, the effect of sports betting on the health of individuals and families, especially children, and the scandals that emerge when oversight fails, such as ethanol contamination in alcoholic beverages. He names what he sees as Brazil’s main obstacle plainly.
Brazil’s Diversity
Brazil’s diversity, “in both social and economic terms,” is in Rodrigo’s view the primary challenge the country faces in overcoming high-level normative dilemmas and problems. He adds two points. The public, he says, often lacks technical explanations “properly backed by original, unquestionable quality documents.” And state agencies, he says, must learn to dialogue with greater efficiency. “We need to move past stating the obvious,” he says. What he does about it is the work he’s doing now.
Where Rodrigo Is Now
Rodrigo’s column for The QA/RA Week and his contributions to the AI & Partners newsletter continue, and he says his interest lies in promoting Brazilian normative work at home and abroad. He says he has been focused for over two years on projects in finance, mental health, education and society, which he leads through his own initiatives and partnerships. His involvement in regulatory work, he told us, isn’t exclusively about monitoring it, and his practical professional goals “aim for broader influence.”
He gives the reason for the work on his profile in a single line: “Because knowledge only serves if it’s for well-being or enlightenment.”
Five Lines from Rodrigo’s Diary
1. “My central idea is not new, I believe, but I only developed it over time.”
2. “We need to move past stating the obvious.”
3. “…it is the combined advantages of composites that make them competitive”
4. “My interest lies in promoting Brazilian normative work as broadly as possible, both domestically and abroad…”
5. “In my case, I hold no particularly radical interest either in new regulations or in challenging existing ones.”
From the Diary of Rodrigo Contrera
Rodrigo Contrera is a Brazil-based writer on regulation and a columnist at The QA/RA Week.
| Role | Columnist, The QA/RA Week |
| Based in | Taboão da Serra, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Also with | AI & Partners, informal contributor |
“Regulating is not necessarily legislating with an emphasis on approval, but rather addressing demands based on feasible criteria.”
Editor’s Note
Executives Diary features Rodrigo Contrera because he writes on regulation across two fields, health and artificial intelligence, and holds a worked argument about who should carry demands to regulators. His answers set out that argument, a view on how new materials and health regulation should be handled, and his reasons. The magazine follows the argument rather than a career chronology, because that is what his answers provide.
Executives Diary, Editorial
