Gabriela is a mixed-methods researcher and social entrepreneur with a background in economics, behavioral science, and public policy. She is fascinated by how people make sense of the world and how environments shape behavior—and she channels that curiosity into designing better services, systems, and policies.

She co-founded LivingWaters Systems, a venture that manufactures portable rainwater harvesting units to expand access to safe water. Under her leadership, the initiative won the RELX Environmental Challenge, the University of Chicago’s Social New Venture Challenge (2020), and the World Food Programme’s Innovation Challenge (2021). Gabriela was also named a Tarrson Fellow at the University of Chicago for her work on the project.

Earlier, she co-founded Salud Por Venezuela, an organization that delivered health services through pop-up medical clinics in Venezuela’s barrios, reaching more than 5,000 residents in a single year. Building on this, she launched Shapers for Venezuela, a Global Shapers cross-hub initiative that has mobilized resources and humanitarian aid for Venezuelan refugees across Latin America since 2018.

Professionally, Gabriela has worked with organizations including the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Behavioral Insights Team, where she partnered with large organizations and city governments to co-design digital services, evaluate innovative interventions, and improve adoption of public tools.

Gabriela’s thought leadership has been featured in NPR’s Planet Money, and she spoke as a panelist at the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in Davos in 2019 on Venezuela’s future. She was selected as a Young Global Changer (2024) and is part of the Governance Futures Network, a global collective reimagining governance through research on decision-making, ritual, and the age of AI.

She is currently based in Brooklyn, New York.