Rafael Isidro Parra-Peña S.

Rafael Isidro joined the Sustainable Agriculture Network and its Technical Unit in August 2022 as Senior Manager, Agriculture Transformation. Rafael provides technical and strategic leadership in the development and implementation of grant funded projects.

Previously, Rafael Isidro has occupied leadership positions in the Government of Colombia and in the private sector such as Vice-President of Agroindustry of Colombia Productiva, Ministry of Trade, Industry and Tourism (MinCIT), Director of the Directorate of Sustainable Rural Development (DDRS) of the National Planning Department (DNP), and Executive Director of the Centre for Regional Coffee and Business Studies (CRECE) of the Colombian Coffee Growers Federation (FNC). He has also worked for multilateral organizations and major think thanks as an economist, associate researcher or senior consultant including the World Bank, Agriculture and Food Global Practice, and the International Finance Corporation (IFC) in Washington D.C,  Fedesarrollo in Bogotá D.C, the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Cali, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC, U.N) in Santiago de Chile and in Bogotá, and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in Bogotá. Likewise, Dr. Parra-Peña has served as external lecturer of the Faculty of Economics at the University of the Andes in Bogotá. Rafael Isidro also has several publications that can be found online.

Rafael Isidro holds a Dphil (Ph.D.) in Economics from the University of Sussex, in Brighton, United Kingdom. He also has a Master of Arts in International Economics from the University of Sussex, as well as another Master and an Undergraduate Degree in Economics from the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá.