Member since
4 years 2 months
MAPPA works on the interaction between planning for the sustainable development of cities and regions and the preservation of cultural and environmental heritage.
The firm and its partners contribute with experience in more than 250 cities and municipalities across Argentina, Bolivia, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panamá, Paraguay, Uruguay and the United States.
MAPPA's practice has focused on urban, regional and environmental planning, climate change, economic and infrastructure development, urban design and management, heritage districts and sites preservations and built environment assessments.
I am a human rights practitioner with more than twenty years of experience in post conflict countries as well as in countries in the EU accession process.
My main areas of expertise are post conflict housing, land and property rights, displaced persons, refugees and migrants’ rights, rule of law, legal aid, transitional justice. I have gathered also a significant experience in monitoring and supervising elections both at the field and central level.
Thanks to these experiences, I developed a series of skills like human rights monitoring and reporting, providing expert advice to governmental bodies, drafting legal documents, advocacy with national authorities, designing projects and tools for the purpose of protecting human rights.
I have worked extensively in the Western Balkans, mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Kosovo and for shorter period of times in Georgia, Ukraine, Rwanda, Jordan and Colombia. Besides these countries, I have recently worked in the United Kingdom as Deputy Director at Europe Regional Office of Amnesty International.
I worked for international organisations, international NGOs, as well as private companies. The roles that I covered were characterized by an increasing level of responsibilities and complexity. For these reasons, I moved from human rights officer to legal advisor, to team leader and in my latest assignment I was deputy director for Europe for Amnesty International. During these years I was also happy to work as a free-lance consultant and whenever possible offer my pro bono support to NGOs and other civil society organisations.
In my work, but also in my life, I am committed to a continuous personal growth, seeking new challenges I am always eager to expand my knowledge and learn new things. For these reasons, I value direct experience, gathered at the field level, which delivers in depth knowledge of the current situation. Experience needs to be combined with the application of existing standards and principles. At the same time humor, kindness, tolerance and a good amount of social skills are also a key features of my professional approach and of my personality.
I have twenty plus (20+) years of experience in development, gender and humanitarian contexts. I am a gender, diversity and protection specialist. I hold a master’s degree in Human Rights, in Public Health, and in Conflict Resolution and Peacekeeping. My areas of expertise include M&E in humanitarian settings, capacity building and policy-oriented research on gender, protection and diversity.. I have worked for the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for several Civil Society Organizations, such as Save the Children, for universities, for UN agencies, such as UNICEF and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, for UN Women, for WHO, for UNFPA, for bilateral agencies (Expertise France, AECID, GIZ, SIDA), for the European Commission (both, DG ECHO and DG INTPA) and for think tanks. Flexible and patiente. I am a team worker, but I am also used to work with autonomy. I love multicultural enviroments and I am highly committed to my job!
Head of country office of ADA in Kosovo, then Burkina Faso; responsible for programming, planning, monitoring etc of AUT dev. support to the partner country. Focal areas - rural (econ.) dev., education. Increased activity in gender, minority support, environment.
Then Team Leader of IPPSHAR (IGAD Promoting Peace and Security in the Horn of Africa Region) programme (financed via EUTF with cofunding from AUT, SWE, NL).
Now Country Director Swisscontact Mali - professional education, labour market insertion, entrepreneurship, rural development; focus on gender, climate change sensitive programming.
My training was in international relations, communications, languages and law, and I have HQ and field experience. I have been working since 2002 for NGOs and international organizations. I started in Italy within a European Commission network, following up projects in Brazil, India and Russia. My first position in Geneva was as representative of the Italian Ministry of Economic Development to Swiss and international organizations. Successive positions, for Swiss Development Agency (Rwanda), UNICEF (Mali) the EU, the UNHCR
(Greece), the International Federation of the Red Cross, enabled me to utilize my interests. These include humanitarian affairs, human rights and solution finding in line with the dignity of the human being. My work has been in the areas of public relations, communications, resource management and research.