By: Bruna Alves Pinto

We, Brazilians in NorthEast Ohio are definitely outnumbered by Puerto Ricans or Mexicans, but our positive influence in the community is very well visible.
Athletes like Anderson Varejão & Yan Gomez definitely help with that mission, but ordinary citizens are mostly responsible for our positive activity & contribution in NEO.
I had the pleasure to interview only a few of them and get those ordinary citizens to share their stories and contribution with the community in NEO within different sectors such as: medicine, education, and arts.

Cristina Araujo McCarthy

Cristina is originally from the city of Salvador in the State of Bahia, in NorthEast Brazil. She has her Bachelor’s degree in Architecture from Brazil. In 1987, when she moved to Cleveland with a scholarship to study, she got her Master’s degree in Urban Studies from Cleveland State University.
Cristina got married and have two beautiful daughters. When her first daughter was born, she decided to work part-time teaching interior design at Virginia Marti college of art & design. College in 1990.
Along the years, she also worked in a architecture firm and in many CDC’S (Community Development Corporations). But in 2007 She became the Director of the Art & Design Department at Virginia Marti college of art & design.
4 years ago Cristina developed a social program to help a cancer foundation named Karen E. Mumford (www.kemfoundation.org). With the help of her students, the team designs a needed space for one chosen patient with cancer.
Cristina was also the President of the American Society of Interior Design – Ohio North in 2012/2013.
She has been a resident of Westlake for over 20 years and says she has always felt very welcomed in the community. Her favorite place in town is the Cleveland Metro Parks and she loves Thanksgiving.
Being so far away from her home country, of courses she misses the warm weather year around and the beach, but she loves NEO and feels very happy to be part of the community.

Luiz Felipe Sieben Martins

Felipe, as he is known among the Brazilian community, is originally from the city of Porto Alegre, in the State of Rio Grande do Sul, south of Brazil.
He moved to the United States in 1986 to obtain his PHD in Mathematics from Brown University in Rhode Island with a scholarship. He concluded his PHD in 1990 and during 3 years he was teaching as a post doctorate lecturer in different schools around the East Coast, until 1994 he got a full time position as a mathematics professor at Cleveland State University and has been there ever since. He teaches and does research for the Department of Mathematics, and he is the coordinator the of all calculus classes for CSU.
He met his wife in Brazil and they moved to the United States together where she also got her master and phd degrees. They have 2 beautiful daughters whom were born here.
In 2014 he published his first book, available online for purchase – Manual for Scientific Computation.

Through the University, he has been part of social programs, such as Sonia Kovalevsky Day, a programs to incentive girls from all ages to study mathematics.
Felipe enjoys cooking very much and he is very good grilling Churrasco (Brazilian BBQ). He is very well connected within the Brazilians, but reveals that it took him 7 years to meet his first Brazilian friend.
Along the years, he believes the Brazilian population has changed. There are more younger people and also with higher levels of education. He says NEO is a very good place to raise a family with low crime rates and low cost of life. Felipe and his family live in Shaker Heights and he really appreciates the cultural diversity he finds everywhere in the Grand Cleveland area. He enjoys the tow paths in the metro parks to ride his bike.

Suzana de Castro Figueira

Suzana was born in NorthEast Brazil in the city of Mossoro, Rio Grande do Norte.
She got a BA in Law from Universidade de Fortaleza – Fortaleza, CE – Brasil, Master of Arts in Community Counseling from John Carroll University, University Heights, Ohio. She studied the English language at UC Riverside and learned Spanish mostly through self-study and practice. She conducts counseling sessions in English, Spanish, or Portuguese.

She moved from Riverside, California to Shaker Heights, Ohio in 1990. Her husband at that time was offered a teaching job at a college here in Northeast Ohio.
She has many years of experience working for non profit Organizations such as Recovery Resources, Family Guidance Center and currently working part time at The Center for Family and Children, with their EAP Department – Ease@work. She also has been practicing clinical counseling for over 5 years on her own private practice in Westlake, Ohio.
She enjoys a lot connecting with the Latino communities in Lorain and Cleveland. She has reached out to El Centro and have volunteered at HUMADAOP. She loves the Lorain International Festival and the Sacred Heart Chapel’s Fiestas Patronales, which is organized by friend Mary Santiago. She and her husband go to the the Fiesta every year for the food and lively music. OF course, they love the annual Carnaval produced by Tropical Cleveland and the many Hot Latin Dance parties.
She sees clients at local community agencies such as Family Guidance Center in Euclid and at The Center for Family and Children in Cleveland, Ohio. Suzana gets many referrals from social agencies and Latino organizations throughout the region.
She loves Avon Lake, where she lives with her husband. Avon Lake is a small and charming community close to the freeway which allows its residents to easily get downtown or to any part of Northeast Ohio..She feels very privileged to live by Lake Erie, having the most beautiful sunset and the fascination by the expanse of water.
Suzana believes Cleveland is a lovely and vibrant city that offers an array of affordable and excellent and diverse cultural experiences any day of the week. She loves the arts, the restaurants and the people that live here. But she won’t deny how It is hard to deal with the grays days of the Winter.
Regarding the Brazilian community, she says: “I am part of the Brazilian community here in the great Cleveland area.There are great Brazilian people from many different regions of Brazil and many different professions and background. The connections are formed because we genuinely like being part of the Brazilian group where we feel at home when we listen to the many different sounds of music and rhythms. We like to celebrate with food and laugh and hugs and good friendship.”
She enjoys cooking as well: “I learned to cook here in the USA when I first came as a young bride. So my cooking is a mix of Brazilian and American culinary. However, when celebrating I always make brigadeiro (sweets caramels balls) As a child, I remember my mother always had brigadeiros in every celebration. I also bake the pao de queijo (cheese bread). I used to make feijoada, which is one of Brazilians main dishes. Now, it is my husband Jack who makes the best feijoada. I feel very happy when my husband shows appreciation for my culture.”

Luca Mundaca

From São Paulo, Brasil, singer songwriter.
She first moved to the United States in 1999, arriving in New York City and was at the time signed by Atlanctic Records.
In 2006, Luca moved to NEO and released her album titled Day by Day. Currently, songs from the Album Day by Day are featured in American movies like “End of Watch” (2013), “The Visitor” (2008), ABC TV Show “Mistresses”(2013) TV Show “Californication” (2008), the independent movie “Kissing Paris” (2008), and the Brazilian TV show “TiTiTi” a telenovela (2010).
As a singer she performs in concert halls in NEO where she sings for all the kinds of peoples with different backgrounds, not only Brazilians.
Regarding her favorite spot in town at the moment, Luca says:
“My favorite place at this moment is the Music Box where a perform once a month with the Bossa Nova Night. The Music Box is a beautiful show house with fantastic food and great music in the EastBank of the flats. But I love the city as a whole, specially downtown. Cleveland is so beautiful and calm.” And just like the other Braziilians, she deslikes the cold weather.
She doesn’t believe to be a very good cook, but won’t pass an apportunity to eat at a Brazilian household. She loves feijoada.
To find out more about Luca’s concert dates, you can all access: www.lucamundaca.com or email her at info@lucamundaca.com

Moises Borges – singer & song writer

Moises is originally from Salvador, Bahia – Brazil. Before he initially moved to Miami – Florida, he worked in the television industry as a photographer and with video production.
In 2001 when he moved to Southern Florida, working with video production, he met his wife and had a son. His wife, at the time, had her family here in Cleveland. She wanted to be closer to her mother and that’s when they moved to NEO in 2001.

When he first arrived in Cleveland, he bought a guitar and self-taught himself how to play it because it was the way he found to keep himself attached to his roots in Brazil. But some of his friends would see him playing and would constantly tell him to start playing professionally.
At the former Touch super club, Puerto Rican Roberto Ocasio, one of Cleveland’s most beloved and gifted artists, founder and leader of the Latin Jazz Project, introduced Moises Borges as a guitar player in a Samba-Salsa concert.
Initially, Moises only played the guitar and beautiful Deb Davidson would sing his songs. But one day, while told he was only playing his guitar at a concert, the leader singer couldn’t make to the concert and Moises was forced to sing. He didn’t think he had the voice to sing, but was proven wrong when after the second song played (Garota de Ipanema), the owner of the venue -former water street grill – asked him to go back every saturday to sing and play. That lasted for 1 1/2 year.
Moises works with a lot of local music students of different institutions like Oberlin College, Cleveland State University, and Cuyahoga Community College, which at Tri-C has a very exclusive band that plays Brazilian Jazz.
On January 30th, Moises will have a concert to celebrate his 13th anniversary playing in partnership with Kenny Daves, one of the biggest legends as a Trumpet player, former teacher of jazz ensembles and trumpet at Oberlin College. This concert will be accompanied by Samba Joy, a very enthusiastic band formed by American students that know everything about Brazilian music. The leader of the band is Dylan Moffitt (who plays with not only Moises, but also Luca Mundaca and so are the other band members like Patrick Graney – music student from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music – the second best conservatory of music in the nation).

Moises has also worked with Diego Figueiredo, one of the biggest Brazilian guitar players in the world. He also has played several times at Severance hall opening up for the Cleveland Orchestra, partnerships for fundraisers with the city of Cleveland at Gordon Square. A very memorable moment for Moises was a fourth of july where he played for over 25 thousand Clevelanders at Public Square.
He loves the diversity present in the region and his favorite place is the Edgewater park, since is so close for him to just ride his bike to the park from his home at Gordon Square.

Adriana Matos

Naturally from Jales, Sao Paulo – Brazil, Adriana left to england when she was 19 to get her ESL certificate from the University of Cambridge. Then she got accepted at Kent State University for BA in International Relations and Political Science in 2000. One year within her BA program, she moved to Cleveland where she met her partner, Puerto Rican Engineer and Entrepreneur Gilberto Alvarez.
At the time, Adriana was 25, she was ready to start her own business and since Gilberto already had a local TV show named Island Delight, then it became Tropical Rhythms. Gilberto and Adriana had a very strong relationship with Joel, a French Dj. They all got together and decided to bring the TV show out to life at Water Street Grill, then at Sunset lounge. From there they started having events at former Moda Nightclub, on West 25th in Ohio City.
That’s where the first edition of the Brazilian Carnaval happened.
Tropical Cleveland has become a pioneer in the city as promoters of the hottest Salsa Parties with a high level class of crowd and fun environment.