Manuela Gil Echeverria

Manuela is a passionate agronomist with a masters degree in Sustainable Business Development, graduated from EARTH University in 2013 and CATIE in 2017. She is currently the Costa Rica country representative of YPARD, and works for EARTH University in the extension project unit called EARTH Futures where she is responsible for supporting smallholder farmers to better access markets and works on the empowerment of women, youth, and farmers in agriculture. In the last 7 years, she has worked in different areas such as organic food production, ornamental plant exports, and the Fairtrade Certification System as a certification analyst at the Latin American Office for FLOCERT. She also worked at PROCOMER, Costa Rica’s trade promotion agency where her role was to impact value chains nationwide through the promotion of commercial linkages in the agricultural sector.