About
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Mónica Berger González heads the Unit of Medical Anthropology at the Center for Health Studies in Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, and is a researcher on transdisciplinary One Health approaches at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute. She is founder and president of the Green Health Initiative, a start-up committed to intercultural health research and development to advance indigenous Mesoamerican ethnomedicine and sustainable plant-based solutions for health and wellbeing. Mónica describes herself as an impatient optimist in love with diversity. Before diving into applied research in 2011, she worked for a decade in community development initiatives around environmental sustainability and poverty alleviation, where she met some of her greatest teachers, Ajq’ij (spiritual guides) and Ajq’omaneel (herbalists) from the Maya traditions of wisdom keepers. She led over 25 projects engaging traditional knowledge and modern high-tech solutions for adaptation to Climate Change in low-resource settings. This experience led her to co-found an NGO in lake Atitlan, Guatemala, committed to fostering symbiotic income-generation strategies respectful of Nan Ulew (Mother Earth). This time taught her the importance of cultural humility, a precondition to learn the immense value of plural epistemologies, pushing her to publish many books and scientific articles to share these views. She is passionate about societal transformation and believes the only way to do it is by transforming one self, as a fractal of the whole, affecting others positively through resonance. Mónica is a consultant for public, private, bilateral and multilateral organizations on intercultural approaches to health and public policy, and volunteers with several Indigenous Councils of Elders on advancing ethnomedicine research. She currently leads four international research projects and is a member of several scientific boards. She earned her undergraduate anthropology degree in Universidad del Valle de Guatemala in 2006 and her PhD in Sciences at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland, in 2016. From 2017 to 2021 she completed two Post-Docs in Zurich University and Swiss TPH – Basel University on topics concerning public health services’ improvement in pluricultural societies. Mónica is a Fellow of the XVI Class of the CALI Fellowship Program and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Program.
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