Lelys Dinarte-Diaz is a research economist in the Human Development Team of the World Bank's Development Research Group. Her primary research fields are development economics and economics of education, with a focus on violence and crime. She uses experimental methods to study the impacts of psychology-based interventions on mental health outcomes. She has research projects in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Jamaica, Peru, and Ecuador. Lelys obtained her Ph.D. and master’s in economics from Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and her B.A. in Economics from ESEN in El Salvador, the country where she was born and raised.