Ana Catalina Garcia

Ana Catalina Garcia de Alba Diaz started her undergraduate education at the University of British Columbia, Canada in 2001. After three years immersed in the cosmopolitanism of Vancouver, she returned to Mexico, graduating with a degree in International Relations from the Universidad Iberoamericana in 2006. During her senior year, she worked as an intern at the Human Rights Defense Unit within the Mexican Ministry of the Interior, overseeing the implementation of decisions by the Inter American Court for Human Rights. She began her professional career working under Federico Vázquez Calero, Director of the National and International Dialogue at the Friedrich Ebert Foundation in Mexico. This experience gave her the chance to focus her energy on issues of development, as well as national and international political cooperation between Mexico, Germany and the European Union. In 2009, she joined the UNDP’s Political Analysis and Prospective Scenarios Project’s regional team, researching the impact of the international economic and financial crisis on democratic governance in Latin America. During this time she also increased her academic focus to concentrate on Early Warning Systems development, social volatility, elite theory and the democratization processes in Latin America. Most recently she has worked as a Corporate Interlock Researcher with the Project on Organizing, Development, Education and Research (PODER) and broadened her interests to cover such issues as social network analysis and corporate accountability. Additional topics she is passionate about include Cultural Diplomacy, Nation Building, Nation Branding and The Muppets. Ana Catalina hopes that the Rotary Peace Fellowship will allow her to further develop her unique skill set so that she can better help address the severe social inequality in Mexico and throughout the world.