Meet the staff

Elisa serves as program coordinator and instructor in Central America. She holds a Licentiate in Diplomacy and International Relations and a Master's Degree in Rural Sustainable Development from the National Autonomous University. Elisa worked for over six years (2007-2013) with cooperatives facilitating training processes that included women empowerment, lobbying and marketing strategies for farmers and their families. Subsequently she coordinated projects for promotion and awareness of Fair Trade´s principles and values through the Latin American Coordinator of Small Scale Fair Trade Farmers-CLAC. Most recently she worked for the Nicaraguan Government at the Ministry of Family Economy building marketing strategies for Small and Medium scale business.

Karina Vargas is Costa Rican, educator and feminist theologian. She holds a master's degree in Global Leadership from Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA), and a master's degree in Studies of Social and Family Violence from Universidad Estatal a Distancia (San José, Costa Rica). She has worked for more than 15 years as an educator in formal and non-formal programs. She currently combines her educational work with research on religion and violence. She also accompanies a group of young migrants and asylum seekers in Costa Rica, where she resides. Karina enjoys spending time with her family, practicing sports, music, playing with children, conversation, traveling, learning languages, cats, movies, drinking water, coffee and wine.

Ceiba G. Maldonado is a gender-expansive individual born to a mixed-race family in Guatemala City. During their twenties they were an “international student” in east Tennessee, which gave them a first-hand understanding of the potential for growth that studying abroad provides. They moved back to Iximulew (Guatemala) after studying a Bachelor's in Communication Studies and a Master's in Cultural Anthropology. Ceiba now creates welcoming spaces where introspection and solidarity can flourish, in a way that contributes to personal and collective healing, by questioning social structures of power and tapping into the wisdom of our individual lineages. They are now happy to contribute their skills and knowledge to CGEE programs in Guatemala.