Alonso Muñoz is Instructor in the Department of Environment and Development at the University for Peace, where he coordinates the Master of Arts (MA) degree in Responsible Management and Sustainable Economic Development (RMSED). He holds a BSc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Costa Rica and a Msc. in Business Administration. He has worked in the private sector as a consultant and as an entrepreneur, and has volunteered on various national and international projects regarding peace education, migration, environmental impact of systems and Social Enterprises. He is a novelist, a blogger, a peace advocate, an entrepreneur and passionate about social and environmental development.
Jan Breitling is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Environment and Development at University for Peace. He holds a BSc. in Tropical Forestry, from the Technological Institute of Costa Rica, and a MSc. in Environmental Sciences from WUR Wageningen University and Research Center, The Netherlands. His research interests include root causes of deforestation and Global Environmental Change, and Environmental Governance, specifically market based approaches addressing biodiversity conservation and Climate Change.
Dr. Monica Araya is the co-founder and Director of Costa Rica Limpia (costaricalimpia.org) to bring people closer to clean technologies that improve their everyday life. Her group pioneered www.movilidadelectrica.org – the first zero emissions electric mobility platforms in Latin America devoted to the education of consumers. She co-founded the Electric Mobility Association in Costa Rica and is the Board´s Vice President. She is a former negotiator in the UN climate talks and has been a reference on climate politics in Latin America. She founded the platform Nivela.org to support new voices on development and environment in Latin America. She writes frequently for international and local newspapers. She is a policy senior adviser at E3G in London and at the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership and is the member of several advisory boards. She studied economics at the National University, got a Masters in Economic Policy at CINPE. She also got a Masters and Ph.D. in environmental management from Yale University. Her TED talk about fossil-free Costa Rica that has over 1 million views and was translated into 30 languages. In December 2016, she joined the world´s largest all-female expedition to Antarctica.
More info: www.monicaaraya.org
Olivia Sylvester, Ph.D., researches sustainable agriculture, food security, climate change, and environmental justice a feminist political ecology perspective. For more than a decade, she has worked in Costa Rica with Indigenous people, women, small-scale farmers, and youth on these topics. Her research is driven by social justice goals and she uses alternative methodologies (e.g., Indigenous, feminist). She has taught in higher education for over a decade in Canada, the United States, and in Costa Rica. Olivia is also an adjunct faculty at Long Island University (USA) and a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the International Society of Ethnobiology, and the Intellectual Property Issues in Cultural Heritage Project. Being active within these networks allows her to work at the interface of policy and practice.
