Biography: This fall I begin my second year as an Environmental Science Masters student at Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Previously, I worked in environmental and scientific education, through the design, illustration, and development of different types of outreach material for a variety of publics. This work offered me a diversity of experiences from writing and illustrating children's environmental books, to creating complex medical illustrations for educational software or designing handbooks for training rural people in the use of sustainable technologies.

I graduated with a BA in Graphic Design form the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, and with a BS in Biology from the Universidad de Antioquia, both in Colombia. I also hold a graduate certificate in Scientific Illustration from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Research Focus:My current research focuses on the potential impact of adopting sustainable cattle ranching practices in tropical regions where this activity prevails. The social and environmental re-conversion of livestock production can contribute to enhance the social and economic conditions of the people, while providing much needed environmental services. The adoption of these practices, however, is not spontaneous and requires a change in the way traditional cattle ranchers relate to their environment. By focusing on the experiences of a five-year pilot project funded by GEF in Colombia, I have been trying to identify those factors that can determine a long-term change of behavior in land use practices.