Silene Ramirez

Silene Ramirez is the Climate Manager-Issue Advocacy, where she collaborates with Vital Voices leaders, network members, and program participants to advance women’s leadership in sustainability action. She joined Vital Voices in 2022 and transitioned from her role as the Latin America and the Caribbean lead within the Global Network & Regional Engagement team. In that position, she managed the day-to-day aspects of the Voices Against Violence Initiative, providing technical assistance on violence against women to projects and program sub-grantees across the region.

Prior to joining Vital Voices, she worked under different capacities serving migrant farmworkers in the US, Afro-descendant communities, Indigenous Peoples, and forestry groups across Latin America. As the Gender Justice manager at the Global Coalition Rights and Resources Initiative she coordinated the Coalition’s gender justice engagement on community land rights in Latin America and indigenous women’s leadership. At Freedom House in Washington D.C, she oversaw the implementation of a multi-year strategy addressing democratic processes and human rights violation documentation in Latin America. In her home country, Costa Rica, Silene worked with Amnesty International’s Stop Violence Against Women program and collaborated with the Women Rights Department at the Inter-American Institute of Human Rights. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati, Ohio with an M.A. in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality studies and a BA in International Relations and Latin American Studies from the National University of Costa Rica. She also holds a Certificate on Human Rights and Access to Justice by University Rafael Landivar in Guatemala.

Best place you’ve traveled? The Perito Moreno Glacier in the Argentinian Patagonia, which is one of the few glaciers in the world that is growing, not receding. This gives me a sense of hope amidst all the sustainability change adversities we are currently facing.