During her tenure she was responsible for helping shape global strategy with former presidents, supreme court justices, business and world leaders, including Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Cesar Gaviria, Richard Branson and the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.
[12] Between 2008 and 2011, Szabó was the civil society liaison for the Geneva Declaration on Armed Violence and Development, working with diplomats and grass-roots organizations around the world.
[13] In the mid-2000s while working for the NGO Viva Rio, Szabó coordinated one of the world's largest disarmament campaigns[14] and helped shape a national referendum to ban the sale of handguns to Brazilian citizens.
She is a member of the board of the Fernando Henrique Cardoso Foundation, the Brazilian Center for International Relations (CEBRI), and the Institute for Mobility and Social Development.
[31] She was a mentor of the Columbia Women's leadership network in Brazil,[32] served as an international jurist for the Bloomberg Mayors Challenge[33] in Latin America and for the MacArthur's Foundation $100 million initiative – 100&Change.
[19] In early 2019, Ilona was nominated by Brazilian Minister of Justice and Public Security Sergio Moro to a voluntary advisory position at the Brazilian National Council for Criminal and Penitentiary Policy, a consulting board which conducts assessments of the penitentiary system, proposes criminal policy guidelines and do inspections of penal establishments, among other duties.
Due to massive attacks by extremists supporters of the Brazilian far-right government on social media, Ilona was removed from the council by the minister on the order of President Jair Bolsonaro.