Graças Foster as the Transportadora Brasileira do Gasoduto Bolivia-Brasil. In 1998, Foster was working for a Petrobras unit that was involved importing natural gas from Bolivia. During this time, she met Dilma Rousseff, who in October 2010, would be elected to serve as the first female President of Brazil. In 1998, Rousseff was a relatively unknown energy official, serving in Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil. Foster and Rousseff developed a lifelong professional relationship, based in their mutual support of the leftist Workers Party, which rose to power in 2002, resulting in the election of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as
Dilma Rousseff election was also a cause of friction among the two parties. They ended up launching each own a different candidate; PDT's was Collares and PT's was Tarso Genro. Rousseff defended the maintenance of the alliance which had elected Dutra, supporting Genro's candidacy, and claiming she would not accept "neoliberal alliances with the right-wing". Her critics said that she was being hypocritical, once she defended an alliance with Marchezan in the 1986 election. Genro defeated Collares in the second round and Rousseff, among other fellow PDT members, joined the Workers' Party. Brizola accused them of being traitors. During Rousseff's management of