Mara Hernández Estrada

Mara I. Hernandez is a peace and consensus building expert with more than 20 years of experience in complex mediations, restorative justice practice, design and facilitation of multi-stakeholder collaborative processes, Do No Harm & conflict sensitivity analyses, collaborative capacity building, violence prevention and conflict management systems. She holds a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Masters in Public Administration (MPA) from Harvard University. She is a certified mediator from the Harvard Law School, a labor conciliator certified by the CONOCER Institute of Mexico, and member of the Inter-American Development Bank’s independent complaint mechanism mediator roaster. 

She is founder and Director of Dialógica, a consulting firm specialized in her field of expertise and a founding member of both the Consensus Building Institute Global Network and the Latin American Network for Peace Building and Conflict Transformation, established to share expertise in the field from around the world. She has taught in her field of expertise at multiple universities in Mexico and abroad, including UNAM, ITAM, CIDE, the Tec of Monterrey, Iberoamericana University, University of Eastern Finland, Barcelona University and the Harvard Meditation Program. 

She has consulted for the UN, World Bank, Inter American Development Bank, USAID, National Democratic Institute and the Canadian government, among others. As an international mediator and conflict management expert, she has worked in Nicaragua, Brazil, Chile, Finland and Ecuador. She is author of several books and journal articles, including Political Negotiations in Democratic Contexts and Conflict Resolution, Restorative Justice and Gender Violence in University Settings, among others.