“I was born and raised in Honduras. While I was in my early teenage years, I was invited to participate in a socio-religious activity for about a week in one of the most remote areas of the country to work with a very underprivileged community. One night, looking up to the stars, I clearly felt that I wanted to have that kind of job for the rest of my life. One in which I would work exclusively for the most needed communities of my country. That is how I started working as a Pastoral agent for the Catholic Church, from a perspective where politics and faith were intrinsically related and salvation was a liberation process for the dispossessed. From that standpoint, popular education was a key element for liberation of given interpretations of the social system that guaranteed social inequality and its reproduction.”

Isabel earned her Bachelor of Science in Social Work from Florida International University, in Miami. Then, she completed her Doctoral Degree in Education at the University of Oviedo, Asturias, Spain. Her doctoral thesis focused on feminist popular education and its application in projects of legal training and development. Her interests and areas of expertise include: popular education, gender training, social research, and evaluation and assessments of social projects. Isabel is the co-founder of La Tapizca (the Harvest, in Spanish) in Honduras and now Popular Education Consultants in the US that assesses progressive social organizations in terms of educational and organizational capacity building processes. She is also the Deputy Director of the Florida Immigrant Coalition (FLIC) and a leader with the Palm Beach County Coalition for Immigrant Rights (PBCCIR).