Marcela Quintero

With 20 years of strong track record of building and leading teams focused on multidisciplinary research for innovation, Marcela Quintero has spent much of her career — from junior scientist to research director — working with diverse disciplinary teams from soils, forages, crops, to climate change, agrobiodiversity, and socioeconomic studies.

Marcela has occupied different leadership positions as Ecosystem Services Theme Leader and Agroecosystems and Sustainable Landscapes Research Director at CIAT, and recently as Multifunctional Landscapes Research Director of the Alliance. Her work entailed building, sustaining and expanding the teams, which required massive efforts to consolidate a coherent research agenda, to promote teamwork, and raise funds.

Marcela has been part of core groups that designed research strategies at the organizational level, including the Alliance’s 2020-2025 research strategy. She led projects of the CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food, and was flagship leader at the CGIAR program on Water, Land and Ecosystems. She has also led the design and now leads the implementation of the CGIAR Agroecology initiative, a transdisciplinary global research initiative that responds to the needs of food system actors in seven countries while aligning with funders priorities.

Marcela is an ecologist from the Universidad Javeriana of Colombia, and holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Agronomy at the University of Florida.

Since November 2022, Marcela Quintero is Associate Director General, Research Strategy, and Innovation for the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT.