Collaborative on Global Children's Issues

Mara Tissera Luna is a program manager at the Georgetown University Collaborative on Global Children’s Issues, where she leads the Breakthrough Series Collaborative on Promoting Early Childhood Development for Young Children on the Move in Northern Central America. This project aims to support and learn from stakeholders who are leading innovative efforts to promote early childhood development and protection for young children displaced and on the move in northern Central America. She is an Argentine consultant with 12 years of professional experience in research and evaluation in child protection and forced migration in Latin America, Europe, and the United States. She holds a sociocultural anthropology degree from the University of Buenos Aires and a Master of Public Administration degree from Central European University.

• Consulted for UNICEF, Refugees International, the University of Edinburgh, the International Refugee Assistance Project, and the Center for Democracy in the Americas. Her research and evaluations have produced or contributed to 25+ reports, handbooks, and articles on child protection, gender-based violence, displaced populations with multiple vulnerabilities (such as children, LGBTQI+ individuals, and women survivors of gender-based violence), and the root causes of displacement in the Americas. 
• ​Conducted fieldwork research and/or worked in Argentina, British Guyana, Brazil, Costa Rica, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico (including the Mexico-U.S. border), Panama, Portugal, and the United States.
• Has specialized in the Latin American region since 2007 through her undergraduate and graduate coursework, a graduate diploma in Latin American & Caribbean studies from the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO), and a certificate of Afro-Latin American & Caribbean studies from Harvard University.