Vanessa is one of the creators of the Systemic Bilingual methodology and has been one of the authors of the teaching materials since its inception; she has been working in the field of teacher development since 1985. She holds a Master’s degree in Education from the University of Bath in the United Kingdom, a postgraduate degree in Neuroscience and Behavior from PUC-RS, a postgraduate degree in Marketing from ESPM, and a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Engineering from the University of São Paulo. She has taken several continuing education courses in English language teaching and Content-Based Language Teaching in the United States and the United Kingdom. She has been a guest speaker at numerous international conferences in the field of English language teaching. She was one of the organizers of the International Conference on CBI/CLIL for Young Learners in 2009—the first conference hosted by Systemic Bilingual—and of the Multi-B international conference on bilingual education in 2019, also hosted by Systemic Bilingual.