YOR

Yesenia Olaya Requene

Colombia

Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation of Colombia

Description

Minister of Science, Technology and Innovation of Colombia and PhD in Anthropology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Her professional training began in public education at the University of Caldas (Colombia), where she graduated as a sociologist. Dr. Olaya was a research associate at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Her broad focus on diversity and racial equality in Latin America led her to become, in 2019, academic coordinator of the Certificate in Afro-Latin American Studies at the Institute for Afro-Latin American Research at the same university. She was also part of the short list of pre-selected members of the UN Working Group Experts on People of African Descent. In 2020, the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) of Mexico awarded her the Fray Bernardino de Sahagún Prize in the area of Ethnology and Anthropology, honorable mention for her doctoral thesis Vivir entre fronteras: movilidades de comunidades frocolombianas en la frontera Colombia y Ecuador. Until April 2023, she was Vice Minister of Talent and Social Appropriation of Knowledge in Minciencias, where she advanced gender policies in Science, Technology and Innovation (CTeI), opportunities for inclusion and differential approach in the training of high-level human talent and linking of doctors. She has listened to civil society organizations, academia and companies to move forward the articulations of the National Development Plan (PND).