overview

• Dr. Maribel Aponte-Garcia is a professor and researcher with a joint appointment between the Graduate School of Business Administration (EGAE) of the Faculty of Business Administration, and the Center for Social Research (CIS) of the Faculty of Social Sciences, both at the University of Puerto Rico (UPR), Río Piedras Campus and members of the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO). In 2015 she founded and still directs the 'Value and Supply Chains in International Trade Project.' This project has obtained local and international grants and awards and incorporates research by EGAE doctoral students. Dr. Aponte-Garcia holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Puerto Rico and her master's and doctoral degrees from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She is Puerto Rico's representative in the Glocal Food Sustainability Network for Latin America and the Caribbean and has been the Caribbean representative on the Latin American and Caribbean Social Research Council (CLACSO) Steering Committee. She is the author of numerous refereed articles, five books on regionalism and Latin American and Caribbean development, and a collection of videos on Cuba. Since 2021, she has been included among the top 100 most cited women academics in Puerto Rico in the academic/scientific literature. She has won awards and research grants at the local and international levels, the most recent being those from the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Foundation in Germany, and the Federal Statistical Research Data Center (FSRDC) in the U.S. (group proposal). Other important awards and scholarships have been awarded by the UPR, the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust, the Switzerland-Bolivia Food Sustainability Project, CLACSO and the Latin American International Trade Network. Her work develops an original method, called "Chain-Business-Trade", to build integrated databases based on the knowledge of import and export data organized by harmonized tariff codes of the product plus the bill of lading documents generated by international carriers. This method is applicable to various sectors with the purpose of identifying and developing industrial and commercial growth strategies at the international level, as well as analyzing restructurings generated by geopolitical changes. In her research, Aponte-Garcia has successfully applied this method to various areas, such as natural disasters, food sovereignty, hydrocarbons, mineral resources, armed conflicts and exporting SMEs, among others. Her most recent book (October 2023) is Post-Disaster Economics and Development. Voices of the Women Economists of Puerto Rico, compiled with Martha Quiñones Domínguez and María Feliciano Cestero. Her most recent fellowship is entitled: Sustainable Trade and Value Chains for Food Security in Puerto Rico. Method to promote the Sustainable Development Goals for the products included in Puerto Rico's basic food basket [FIPI-SDG 2023-2024]. In 2023, the Association of Economists of Puerto Rico dedicated its Annual Assembly to her, the first time that the Association honors a woman economist.