Marcela is the Senior Specialist for Strategic Futures with Natural England, where she is furthering futures, systems thinking, and innovation to help strengthen strategic decision making across the organisation. Marcela has also been working to champion futures thinking in the security sector through her support on a number of initiatives, including involvement in the Paris Peace Forum 2021. She was awarded the NGFP Security and Technology Special Award 2021 for her project proposal focused on leveraging youth voices to shape the future global security agenda. In her previous role with the INTERPOL Innovation Centre, Futures and Foresight Lab, she helped to establish the first Global Horizon Scan for law enforcement, a participatory futures game, and launch the first INTERPOL Young Global Police Leaders Programme.
Prior to this, she worked at NATO, supporting their project management systems and contributed to efforts of change management and digitalization. Previous experiences have seen her advocate for Women’s Empowerment with a venture philanthropy organization initiating microfinance projects in the MENA region. She has also spent time supporting a UK academy with the goal of providing education through sport to marginalized youth in London. Marcela is a member of the Association of professional Futurists (APF), a Next Generation Champion (NGC) and has supported the National Strategy for the Next Generation (NSxNG).
She completed her BA at King’s College London, before graduating with an MSc in Development Management from the London School of Economics and later went on to complete a Master of Law in Transnational Crime and Justice with the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute.