Community Capacity and Resilience in Latin America (PDF)

Isabel Gutierrez-Montes is Colombian Biologist (Universidad Nacional de Colombia), with a master's degree in Natural Resources from CATIE and a Ph.D. in Rural Sociology from Iowa State University. Isabel works in Mesoamerica and South America using qualitative research methods as a diagnostic and planning tool in landscape management, assessment of vulnerability, implementation of farmer field schools, and socioenvironmental educational programs. She currently is the dean of CATIE (Tropical Agricultural Research and Higher Education Center) graduate school. In the past she has been the academic coordinator of the Environmental Socioeconomics Master's Program, Coordinator and Leader of the Mesoamerican Agroenvironmental Program (MAP) and Director of the Development and Conservation Academic Program (PAPDC) at CATIE, Costa Rica. In the academic field, she has been a principal advisor for the Ph.D. theses of three students and served on Ph.D. thesis committees for two students, as well as major professor for the master's theses of 46 students and master's thesis committees of 35 students. She has published books, book chapters and technical and scientific articles in English and Spanish.

Cornelia Butler Flora is Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Iowa State University and research professor at Kansas State University. Her doctorate is from Cornell University, specializing in the sociology of development and population studies. She served as Director of the Population Research Laboratory at Kansas State University, Chair of the technical committee of the Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Collaborative Research Support Program, Head of the Department of Sociology at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and Director of the North Central Regional Center for Rural Development. She served as member of the board of directors of Consortium for Sustainable Development of the Andean Ecoregion and Winrock International and served as past president of the Rural Sociological Society, the Community Development Society and the Agriculture, Food and Human Values Society. She has been consultant for international organizations and foundations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the United States and Canada. Her primary research interests are the intersections of human communities and agro-ecosystems and sustainable intensification in the context of climate change, with an emphasis on gender. She has taught courses and done research on rural development in Spain (as a Fulbright Professor) and Uruguay (including periods as a Fulbright Professor) as well as Argentina and Peru.