Raquel Wexler has worked in international development, public health and humanitarian affairs for almost three decades, beginning with her first deployment to the field as AMIGOS dental education volunteer in Limon, Costa Rica in 1987. She continued with AMIGOS as Supervisor of community sanitation activities in Michoacan, Mexico; Assistant Project Director of dental, school and latrine-building programs in Costa Rica, and Director of rabies vaccination projects in Manabi, Ecuador in 1989. Following her interest in Latin America, she pursued undergraduate studies in Spanish literature and Latin American studies at Georgetown University and spent her junior year abroad at the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro. While pursuing two Masters degrees in Latin American Studies and Community and Regional Planning in developing countries at the University of Texas at Austin, Raquel conducted research on urbanization in the Amazon region of Brazil, funding by the Ford Foundation, and wrote her thesis on the impact of a communications campaign and social mobilization on the urban environmental health of residents of a Brazilian favela. An internship at the United Nations lead to assignments with various entities of the U.N. system in Turkey, Burundi, Ethiopia, the Philippines and Rwanda, and at headquarters in N.Y working in program planning, monitoring and evaluation; U.N. reform, and external relations, communications and advocacy. Raquel undertook post-graduate coursework at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, focused on the monitoring and evaluation of national HIV/AIDS programs. She also worked as a World Bank-funded M&E Team Leader within the National AIDS Council of Mozambique. Raquel speaks Spanish and Portuguese fluently and has high proficiency in French.