Catalina is a gender and youth specialist with over 15 years of experience in international development. She is a consultant at the World Bank working on gender and youth issues in violent conflict, transport, and energy and extractives. She is the co-author and gender and youth lead for the UN/World Bank report: Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict.
Catalina has worked as a gender advisor for governments including for the Ministry of Public Education and the Ministry of Foreign Relations of Costa Rica. She has also worked with the private sector on corporate social responsibility with the Monge Foundation as the Director of International Strategy. At the Inter-American Development Bank she worked on topics of gender and climate change, and prior to that was a professor at the Department of International and Transcultural studies at Columbia University.
Catalina holds a PhD in Sociology of Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where attended as a Fulbright Student; she has an MA in International Education from Framingham State University and a BA in Psychology from Universidad de Monterrey in Costa Rica.