Marine Biologist from Universidad Jorge Tadeo Lozano in Colombia (South America), with a Ph.D. in Natural Resources and Environmental Studies from the University of New Hampshire (USA). Professionally during her first five years, she has worked since 2000 as taxonomist of deep-sea fishes of the Colombian Caribbean, contributing to knowledge with new reports and new species for Science. Then she leaned towardsIntegrated Coastal Management, and for the last 15 years has dedicated his research to understanding how small-scale marine-coastal fisheries (SSMF) in Colombia (including both Caribbean and Pacific coasts) can be managed from a bottom-up perspective (decentralized): working with fishers from different communities in alliance with the National Fisheries Administration. In her research, she has validated the traditional and ecological knowledge of Colombian fishers as a fundamental complement to scientific knowledge for decision-making within the framework of an adaptive process of fisheries governance in the country. She generated from the Academy a channel of communication between the National Fisheries Administration and the communities to seek fishing management measures that point to a national fisheries management policy. 

Currently, she develops her research from transdisciplinary approaches making visible hidden fishing conflicts through a socio-environmental lens, in particular in those subjects that have been little studied in her country but are the basis of the imbalance of the SSMF sector, such as “Justice in Fishing Territories”. 

She is currently a Full Professor and Scientist at the Universidad del Magdalena (in the Biology and Fisheries Engineering Programs) in Santa Marta, Colombia, where she directs the Research Group on Socioecological Systems for Human Well-being (In Spanish: Grupo de Investigación en Sistemas Socioecológicos parael Bienestar Humano-GISSBH).