Cintia Cruz

Cintia Cruz has extensive research experience, including one and a half years at the Gender and Race Department at UC Berkeley. They earned a PhD in Gender and Women’s Studies at the Federal University of Bahia, Brazil. Their thesis, defended in 2019, “Trails of Black Women,” centered on the comparative self-esteem of Black women in Oakland, California, and Salvador, Brazil. After receiving their doctorate, they served at the United Nations: Joint Program on the Eradication of Child Marriage and Early Unions in Latin America and the Caribbean (2021); The Project to Prevent Pregnancy among Teenagers at the Triple Border, Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay (2019). 

Dr. Cruz became broadly familiar with the numerous and varying structural impediments and cultural practices constraining girls’ mainly black and Indigenous, in the region. They hold a Master’s degree in Social Sciences and gather an academic trajectory strongly defined by the alignment of project management and research wo to enhance marginalized communities’ autonomy. In 2022, as a national consultant for UNICEF, they delivered the Brazilian report to the Summit Education at the United Nations General Assembly 2022, entitled The Map of Hope to Transform Education in Brazil. In 2020, Dr. Cruz was the national consultant in Brazil for the transnational research on gender and race-based violence against community leaders held by the United Nations Population Fund in nine Latin America and the Caribbean countries. In 2019, Cintia led a program for the United Nations Population Fund at the Triple Border, Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay, on reproductive justice to reduce sexual violence against girls and adolescents. During the pandemic, they coordinated research to listen to youth in Brazil about mental health and life plans.