About me
I am a student in the Masters of Sustainable Development Practice Program at the University of Florida.
Originally from Puebla, Mexico, I earned a BA in International Relations, Tec de Monterrey, Puebla, Mexico.
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Experience: Over the last years Omar has been an advocate for raising awareness of the increasing challenges that climate change will pose to our society. His passion for designing strategies to transition from our current social contract to a new society that thinks beyond and lives within limits as proposed by UNEP has built up on his experience as a project management professional at leading international research and development organizations.
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After graduating from Tec de Monterrey in 2015, he joined the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in the Project Management and Resource Mobilization efforts, managing grants and supporting the Management Committee by generating donor intelligence. There, he was able to learn more about environmental and food security issues and the international efforts to address them. Since 2018, as Administrator for the Global Environment Facility-Small Grants Programme in Mexico, implemented by the United Nations Development Programme, he took over the administrative, programmatic, financial, and operative responsibilities to ensure its effective and efficient implementation.
While managing 100+ grants, Omar gained first-hand experience on what it takes to address the drivers of environmental degradation at a local level through integrated and sustainable management practices in agriculture, fisheries, and forestry. In addition to supporting grassroots organizations empowerment through capacity building on cybersecurity and grants management, as well as monitoring project sites in hundreds of communities, he has been creating links for a future collaborative network of community based and civil society organizations throughout Mexico´s southeastern ecosystems.
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Interests: Community empowerment, gender equality, direct democracy, localization, sustainable livelihoods, environmental regeneration, agroecology, Food-Energy-Water nexus, resilience, and climate change.
