Mayra Gomez

Both of her parents were born and raised in the Andes, in a small Aymara village called Chijmuni in the Aroma Province and later emigrated first to the city of La Paz, where she was born; then to Chile, and later to California. As an adult, she lived and worked in Nicaragua and Europe for an extensive time and presently resides in Aotearoa, New Zealand.
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Mayra has been an activist of Aymara/Indigenous people for much of her adult life leading her to be in Geneve in 1993 as the Draft Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples was being completed. There, she denounced the effects of uranium mining on life and indigenous peoples. Her work experience is varied, she was a partner in an international literary agency where she dealt with copyright issues; she was an outreach coordinator for the United Nations Foundation and she also worked in Bolivia as the International Media Liaison for the government.

She holds a masters degree in Pacific International Affairs from the University of California, a Multi-Disciplinary Program including economics, finance, and politics with expertise in International Environmental Policy and Latin America as Regional Area of concentration. She has also studied Human Rights and Latin American Studies at the University of Sorbonne, France.