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
Maria do Rosário from 2011 to 2020. In 2004 Maria do Rosário was an unsuccessful candidate for deputy mayor on the ticket headed by fellow party member Raul Pont. In 2008 she was a mayoral candidate, losing to incumbent mayor José Fogaça. She was the Workers' Party's vice-president from 2005 to 2007. She was re-elected for a third term in 2010, after resolving legal issues relating to her 2008 campaign. On 8 December 2010 President-elect Dilma Rousseff appointed Maria do Rosário to succeed Paulo Vannuchi as head of the Secretariat of the Presidency of the Republic for Human Rights, a ministerial-level cabinet office.