In 2012 Professor Alexandre Kalache became the first President of the newly-created ILC-Brazil in his birth city of Rio de Janeiro.  ILC-Brazil is an autonomous think tank which is part of a multinational consortium of seventeen such centres. Dr Kalache is a specialist in age-related issues. Specifically, his expertise is in the epidemiology of ageing & the life-course, inter-sectoral policy development (including age-friendly initiatives), health promotion, old-age care, human rights and migration within the context of ageing as well as the more general cultural complexities of the world-wide longevity revolution. Building on his initial medical career in Brazil, Kalache spent more than thirty years studying and working in Europe and the USA; principally, London, Oxford, Granada, Geneva and New York. His post-graduate degrees, MSc in Social Medicine 1977 and PhD in Epidemiology 1993, were attained in the UK. From 1977 to 1984 he held the position of Clinical Lecturer and Senior Research Fellow (under the mentorship of Professor Sir Richard Doll) at Oxford University. He was the founder of the Epidemiology of Ageing Unit at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (the foremost UK School of Public Health) where he also taught from 1984 to 1995. At the same institution he also conceived and coordinated the first ever European Masters Degree course in Health Promotion (1991).