Christian Gebara
| Christian Gebara | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | Brazilian |
| Education | Fundação Getúlio Vargas, São Paulo (Business Administration); Stanford Graduate School of Business (MBA) |
| Occupation | Business executive |
| Employer | Telefônica Brasil |
| Title | President and Chief Executive Officer |
| Known for | Leading the diversification of Vivo into digital financial, health, education and entertainment services; co-chair of the B20 digitalisation task force |
Christian Mauad Gebara is a Brazilian executive who has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Telefônica Brasil, the telecommunications group that trades under the brand Vivo, since January 2019. He also sits on the company's board of directors. Gebara built his career inside the wider Telefónica group over more than a decade before taking the top job in Brazil, and since 2019 he has directed the company's push to diversify beyond traditional connectivity into digital financial services, healthcare, education and entertainment.
Beyond his role at the company, Gebara chairs several telecommunications industry bodies in Brazil and has represented the sector internationally as co-chair of a digitalisation task force at the B20, the business forum associated with the G20. He is a frequent public voice on telecommunications policy, particularly the "fair share" debate over how internet infrastructure costs should be funded.
Early life and education
Gebara holds a degree in business administration from the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) in São Paulo, a leading business school in Latin America. He went on to complete a Master of Business Administration at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University in the United States. According to his biography, this combination gave him both a grounding in the Brazilian business environment and exposure to the technology-driven, disruptive business models associated with Stanford's location in Silicon Valley, an outlook that later became central to his leadership at Vivo.
Career
Early career in finance and consulting
Before entering telecommunications, Gebara worked in banking and strategic consulting. He held positions at Citibank and Banco ABC Roma in São Paulo and at JP Morgan Chase in New York. He then worked for the consultancy McKinsey & Company, based in Spain, where he worked on market analysis, corporate restructuring and large-scale strategy. Gebara has credited this period with providing the analytical training that shaped his later roles.
Rise through Telefónica (2006 to 2018)
Gebara joined the Telefónica group in June 2006 as Director of Quality and Processes at Telefónica España in Madrid, a role that gave him an operational view from the group's headquarters. In 2008 he became Director of Strategy and Regulation at Telefónica Internacional S.A. (TISA), overseeing strategy and regulatory issues across the group's international operations.
He returned to Brazil in 2011, at a point when Telefónica and Vivo were being integrated into a single operation, and was named Vice President of Strategy and New Business, taking a central role in the merger and the company's strategic realignment. In 2012 he became Vice President of Mobile Business, taking direct responsibility for one of the company's main sources of revenue.
Following the 2015 merger with GVT, a fixed-broadband provider, Gebara's responsibilities widened again. He was named Chief Revenue Officer, responsible for all revenue-generating areas, and was subsequently promoted to Chief Operating Officer, a role in which he oversaw the company's consumer, business and wholesale divisions as well as network operations, IT, customer service and its innovation and digital units. This sequence of appointments exposed Gebara to strategy, operations, finance and technology before he was named to the presidency.
President of Telefônica Brasil (2019 to present)
Gebara became President and Chief Executive Officer of Telefônica Brasil on 1 January 2019, succeeding Eduardo Navarro de Carvalho, and was simultaneously named to the company's board of directors. His mandate as chief executive was later renewed through to 2028.
The "tech company" strategy
The central thesis of Gebara's leadership has been an effort to have the business valued by capital markets as a technology company rather than a conventional telecommunications operator, a category that has historically commanded higher valuation multiples. He set out this strategy in late 2019 and accelerated it through the COVID-19 pandemic. Under this approach, high-quality connectivity remains the core business, but Gebara has argued that diversification into digital services is necessary for sustainable medium and long-term growth, since such services typically require less capital investment than network infrastructure.
To carry out this strategy, Gebara has directed the company's expansion into several new business lines built on its existing customer base, brand and distribution channels. In financial services, he oversaw the launch of Vivo Money, a personal-lending product that by the first quarter of 2023 had reached a loan portfolio of 239 million reais and generated 94 million reais in revenue; the company has also invested, through its corporate venture capital fund Vivo Ventures, in the instalment-purchasing startup Klubi. In healthcare, Gebara backed the creation of Vida V, a health marketplace offering telemedicine and discounted consultations and exams, strengthened by the acquisition of the platform Vale Saúde Sempre. In education, he launched Viva E, a joint venture with the education group Ânima, and led the effort to bring the French coding school École 42 to Brazil to train developers and data scientists. In entertainment, he positioned the company as a distribution hub for streaming services including Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify, a business that generated 101 million reais in revenue in the first quarter of 2023 from more than 2.2 million subscriptions sold. He also expanded business-to-business offerings in cybersecurity, the Internet of Things and cloud computing, a segment that generated 813 million reais in the first quarter of 2023.
Network infrastructure: 5G and fibre
Gebara has argued that a modern network is the necessary foundation for the digital services strategy, and under his leadership the company prioritised investment in fifth-generation mobile technology and fibre-optic broadband. He has described the approach to 5G as one of "rational expansion", prioritising the quality of the customer experience over simply maximising the number of antennas, and has repeatedly pointed to the high cost of compatible handsets and the tax burden as barriers to wider adoption of the technology in Brazil. The company has also begun planning for 5G Advanced.
On fibre, the company has pursued an aggressive rollout of fibre-to-the-home connections, with a target of 29 million homes passed, which it states makes it the operator of the largest fibre network in Latin America. That expansion has combined direct investment in the state of São Paulo with a joint venture, FiBrasil, formed with the Canadian pension fund CDPQ for the remaining regions.
Organisational restructuring (2024)
In 2024, alongside the renewal of his mandate, Gebara carried out an organisational restructuring. The most significant change was the creation of a Chief Operating Officer position, filled by Alex Salgado, intended to integrate the company's business, technology and operations functions more closely. Five new vice-presidencies reporting to the COO were created, covering areas including consumer business, business-to-business, innovation and customer experience. The restructuring was presented as the organisational counterpart to Gebara's technology-company strategy, intended to remove traditional operator silos in favour of a more product-centred structure.
Industry roles and public positions
Alongside his role at Telefônica Brasil, Gebara chairs several telecommunications industry associations in Brazil, including Conexis Brasil Digital and FEBRATEL, giving him an influential voice in discussions with regulators, government and the wider public. He also serves as co-chair of the digitalisation task force at the B20, the business forum linked to the G20, extending his influence from the domestic to the international stage.
Gebara is one of Brazil's leading proponents of the "fair share" model, under which large technology companies that generate a substantial share of data traffic through streaming and social media would contribute financially to the cost of network infrastructure. He has framed the proposal not as a new tax but as a necessary partnership, comparing it to a toll paid by the heaviest users of the infrastructure; large technology companies affected by such proposals have not been quoted in the dossier disputing this framing.
He has also spoken frequently about what he calls Brazil's "digital paradox": the country ranks among world leaders in daily time spent online while still showing deep inequality in digital literacy. He has argued that digitising essential services such as health and education is the fastest way to reduce social inequality, provided it is paired with coherent public policy. On tax policy, Gebara has argued that telecommunications services should be classified as essential in Brazil's tax reform, saying that high taxes on services and handsets are a barrier to the adoption of technologies such as 5G among lower-income consumers.
Awards and recognition
Gebara received the Executivo de Valor award from the newspaper Valor Econômico in the "IT & Telecom" category in both 2024 and 2025, an award the paper says recognises leadership in innovation, management and diversity. He also received the Lideranças Eco award at the 2024 Prêmio Eco Amcham, which recognises executives for sustainability practices.
During his tenure the company has also received corporate recognition, including being named the most sustainable company in Brazil by B3's Índice de Sustentabilidade Empresarial and inclusion in global indices such as the FTSE Global Diversity & Inclusion Index, the MSCI ESG Leaders index and the Bloomberg Gender-Equality Index. In 2023 it was the only Brazilian company on Fortune magazine's "Change the World" list, cited for its Vivo Recicle electronics recycling programme, and it was named among the world's 100 most sustainable companies by Corporate Knights.
Assessment
Gebara's record combines a long, methodical rise through a single corporate group with a clearly stated strategic bet since taking the top job. Supporters point to concrete results tied directly to his tenure: a renewed mandate through 2028, a diversified revenue base spanning lending, health, education, streaming distribution and business services, and a fibre and 5G buildout the company describes as the largest in Latin America. His framing of connectivity as essential infrastructure and his advocacy for lower taxes on devices and services are consistent with a stated concern for digital inclusion in a country he himself describes as unequal in digital literacy.
At the same time, several aspects of his public profile call for caution. Much of the evidence for the success of the "tech company" strategy, including revenue figures for lending, streaming and business services, comes from the company's own first-quarter 2023 disclosures rather than independent analysis. His sustainability and reputation credentials likewise rest substantially on indices and awards administered by index providers and media partners rather than independent audits. His simultaneous chairmanship of multiple industry associations and an international task force concentrates considerable influence over telecommunications policy in a single executive, a pattern the dossier itself flags as notable. His "fair share" advocacy, while framed by Gebara as a partnership rather than a tax, is also a position that would benefit his own company financially, and the dossier does not record a rebuttal from the technology companies it targets.