Rodrigo Tardelli Meirelles

Rodrigo Tardelli Meirelles was born in Ribeirão Preto, Brasil, on 29 October 1969, the first child of Antônio Roberto Junqueira Meirelles and Luzia Cleide Tardelli Meirelles. At age two they relocated to the family farm, Fazenda Taboa, some 75 kilometers north of Ribeirão Preto, in the municipality of Morro Agudo.

Rodrigo’s earliest memories come from his childhood at the Fazenda Taboa, where he grew up with close contact with the outdoors, the land and the people that lived in the land and of the land. The Fazenda Taboa was the fertile ground where many of the stories in this book were planted and are now being harvested.

At age seven, the family relocated to the near by city of Orlândia, where his parents still live, so that the now four children could attend school. This move launched Rodrigo into a journey in search of knowledge and the world.

This journey took him to places far away from home, including taking residence in the Netherlands and then in the United States, besides extensive traveling, but no matter how much distance or time Rodrigo will always return to the blood red soil of the Fazenda Taboa to recharge his batteries and then start a new journey to boldly go where he has never been before in this “mundo velho, sem porteira.”

Rodrigo holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP) and a MBA from Michigan State University (MSU) and currently lives in Mattawan, Michigan, with his wife Maria José, children Maria Eduarda and Daniel and their black lab Tupã.