Henrique Meirelles is the minister of finance of Brazil. He was previously chairman of J&F, a holding of JBS and five other companies, and chairman of Lazard Americas. Minister Henrique Meirelles went on to become the longest serving president of the Central Bank of Brazil, a position held from 2003 to 2011. In 2002, he was elected as a congressman in Brazil. He was a member of the Board of Directors of Raytheon Corporation, Bestfoods and Champion International. In 1996, he was appointed president of BankBoston Corporation and in 1999 president of the Global Bank at FleetBoston Financial. He was also member of the Council of Lloyd's of London and member of the Board of Directors of Azul Linhas Aéreas Brasileiras. He joined BankBoston in Brazil in 1974 and became president of the Brazilian operations in 1984. Meirelles was also a member of the Advisory Board of the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. He is the head of Associação Viva o Centro, a NGO he founded in the 1990s for the revitalization of the downtown area in São Paulo.