Dr Ana Pérez Zaldívar, a Spanish national, is a senior health and nutrition expert with over 20
years of professional experience in the development of evidence-based policy and programs,
technical adviser to governments and international organizations, and monitoring and evaluation.
She currently lives and works in Sri Lanka as freelance researcher and technical adviser to the
Ministry of Health in different topics. She also collaborates with the National Institute of Public
Health in Mexico in developing publications about primary health care systems. As a certified
coach she conducts personal and professional coaching sessions in Sri Lanka and overseas. As
part of her commitment to public health and evidence generation, Ana is member of the Sri
Lanka national committee for road accidents prevention and the European Evaluation Society
(EES).

Before moving to Sri Lanka, Ana worked in Mexico and Guatemala strengthening national
monitoring and evaluation frameworks to measure the performance of multi-sectoral health and
nutrition approaches.

She previously worked with the UN REACH initiative to tackle nutrition from a cross-sectoral
and multi-institutional perspective and supported the development of policies and joint-programs
design and implementation working at the Rome headquarters and in Mauritania under the UN
Resident Coordinator´s office.

Previously Ana worked with NGOs in emergency and post-emergency responses in Angola
supporting the transition and the capacity building of government structures at national and subnational
level. Her initial professional experience working in the private sector in logistics has
served to excel in these roles.

Ana has a doctorate in Public Health (National Institute of Public Health in Mexico), Master’s
degree in Public Health (London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine) and a Master’s
degree in Cooperation and Development Agents (Basque Country University).

Her passion for public health and nutrition has taken her to reach young readers becoming an
author of children’s books with focus on gender equality, nutrition and human rights topics: Las
Aventuras de Brocole (Ed. Alfaguara, Guatemala 2015); Lola la Bici (Ed. Loqueleo, Guatemala
2015); El vuelo de Lila (Ed. Loqueleo, Guatemala 2016).