Margarita Fernandez is the executive director of the Vermont Caribbean Institute (VCI), a small non-profit organization that implements collaborative projects, and coordinates professional exchanges and educational courses that address sustainable food systems and biodiversity conservation in Cuba since 2004. She also coordinates the Cuba-US Agroecology Network. Margarita joined VCI in January 2015 after nearly 20 years working on transdisciplinary research and the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of international cooperation projects in the Global South including Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and Venezuela. She specializes in agroecology and food systems, sustainable livelihoods, certification systems, food security/sovereignty and biodiversity conservation. Margarita has worked with multi-stakeholder teams at the research-practice-policy nexus to link results-based evidence with action and policy change. Since 1998, she has been collaborating in Cuba with state, non-governmental, and international organizations on the island and serves as an advisor to several groups working in Cuba. She holds a PhD in agroecology from the University of Vermont, a Master's in social ecology from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, where she studied Havana, Cuba's urban agriculture systems, and a Bachelor’s in biology from Tufts University.