[5] Maria da Conceição de Almeida Tavares was born in Anadia in the Aveiro District of Portugal on 24 April 1930.

To escape the Estado Novo dictatorship in Portugal under António de Oliveira Salazar, she moved to Brazil in February 1954, already married to her first husband, Pedro José Serra Soares, and got pregnant with their daughter Laura.

[3][6][7] Because she was unable to have her qualifications recognised in Brazil to allow her to teach at university, she began working in 1955 as a statistician at the National Institute of Immigration and Colonization (INIC), now the Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrária (INCRA).

Between 1958 and 1960 she was also a member of the Executive Group (Grupo Executivo) for Heavy Mechanical Industry (Geimape), one of the industry-coordinating bodies established during the government of President Kubitschek.

However, due to the worsening political situation in Chile she interrupted her course to return to Santiago to assist the government of Salvador Allende, working in the Ministry of Economy as a volunteer advisor.

At the same time, she continued to be involved in Brazilian policy arguments about income distribution with the monetarist economist Carlos Geraldo Langoni, who would go on to become the governor of the Bank of Brazil.

In late 1973, she was visiting professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico and, in 1974, at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, in the same country.

[3][7][8] In early 1975, she was invited to be an economic consultant for the Financiadora de Estudos e Projetos (Funding Agency for Studies and Projects - FINEP), a position she held until 1979.

Tavares became a full professor of macroeconomics at UFRJ in 1978, with a thesis entitled "Cycle and crisis: the recent movement of the Brazilian economy".

In general terms, her ideas are that the State must play a leading role in inducing investment and in planning the country's economic development.

In March 1986, she became known to the public for her testimony on television in defence of the Cruzado Plan, an economic stabilization programme designed to control rampant inflation, which was implemented by the government of José Sarney.

[3] Tavares then temporarily left political activism and began dedicating herself exclusively to teaching at UFRJ and the University of Campinas, writing texts on economics and giving lectures around the country.

[16] Over 60 years, she trained generations of Brazilian economists and political leaders, including the former President of Brazil, Dilma Rousseff; José Serra, who held several ministerial positions in the federal government and was also governor of São Paulo state; the economics professor, Carlos Lessa; and the former president of the Brazilian Development Bank, Luciano Coutinho.

She was the author of several published works, some of which remain required reading for university economics courses in Brazil and have also been translated into Spanish, in addition to hundreds of articles in specialized magazines and periodicals.