Valeria Gomez Palacios
Co-founder and Program Director, Global Emergency Response and Assistance
Bio
“What inspires me the most about Latino Changemakers in the US is that Latino leaders understand the responsibility of actively recommending and advocating for other qualified leaders to have a space in the decision-making spaces, and in doing so be one step closer to reducing the barriers that limit us.”
“Valeria Gomez Palacios – Co-founder and Program Director, Global Emergency Response and Assistance. Valeria Gomez Palacios is a skilled advocate and public policy professional with experience working with national and local governments, civil society actors, and multilateral organizations. She is the Co-founder of Global Emergency Response and Assistance, a nonprofit organization with a mission to protect human rights and to restore the dignity, well-being, and safety of those affected by conflicts and disasters. She serves as Program Director, where she informs and shapes GERA’s policy and advocacy, allowing her to serve and support the dignified resettlement of over 12,000 refugees and asylum seekers to date.
Previously, she served as a consultant for the Stanley Center for Peace and Security and the Center on International Cooperation at NYU, working on projects to reduce and prevent urban violence. While at the Governance Lab, she collaborated on projects with the Mexican Electoral Tribunal, the Inter-American Development Bank, and local and national governments to advance democratic governance innovation and civic engagement. In Nicaragua, she worked at the Organization of American States promoting access to justice for marginalized communities in Latin America. Valeria is a European Commission and One Young World Peace Ambassador, and her work as a civil society advocate promoting human rights legislation was featured in the book How to Make a Difference by Ella and Kate Robertson. Her opinion articles on human rights issues have been published in the Foreign Policy Journal, Global Public Policy Watch, and Greenhaven Publishing. She also served as a Civil Society Representative to the United Nations, where she advocated for the rights of refugees and to generate political will to safeguard human rights in Latin America.
She holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs with expertise in Economic and Political Development from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), and a Bachelor of Science in Diplomacy and International Relations from Seton Hall University. Her most recent endeavor is a fellowship at American University’s Women and Politics Institute’s We Lead Program, a training cohort for women in political leadership. She is fluent in Spanish, English, French, and German.
