Marizaida Sánchez Cesáreo

Marizaida Sánchez Cesáreo earned her doctorate in Clinical Community Psychology with a minor in Women’s Studies from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. As a seasoned Public Health Executive who began her career in 1989, she currently leads Grupo Nexos. Her work philosophy is that lasting social change is achieved through the deliberate collaboration of implementers, investors, and scientific partners. Her vast experience in program development, evaluation, capacity building, technical assistance, community-based research, and evidence-based interventions has led her to work in various locations.  In academia, she serves as the Director of the Division of Community Services (DCS) at the Graduate School of Public Health, University of Puerto Rico. Over the past two decades, she has dedicated her efforts to advancing policies, practices, and programs that address health disparities among children, youth, and families. Her collaborative approach includes partnerships with public government, community organizations, both public and private foundations, and academic institutions. In her leadership capacities, she has garnered over $65 million in external funding and initiated over 50 projects based on the Collective Impact framework. In the areas of public policy she serves as Chair of Puerto Rico State Advisory Board for Juvenile Justice Prevention (PR-SAG). The program seeks to promote the implementation, scalability, and replicability of programs to prevent, reduce and address risk factors of juvenile delinquency implemented by community-based organizations and units of local government, including educational programs. In the area of public health innovation, she had a key role in the development and dissemination of Parenting Fundamentals (PF) to more than 8,000 individuals in Puerto Rico and Illinois. PF is an evidence-based parenting education initiative designed to improve parents’ comprehension of child development, encourage nonviolent discipline and positive parenting techniques, bolster children’s academic achievements, cultivate nurturing home settings, and diminish the likelihood of child abuse. She spearheaded a local effort to create the Puerto Rico Evidence-Based Board (www.juntapbepr.org). The mission of the Institution is to identify, establish, provide and disseminate preventive evidence practices and programs in Spanish, developing the first digital database of EBPs in Spanish (www.archivopbe.info). In 2018 she was designated to represent Puerto Rico as the first delegate to the International Union of Psychological Science and she has been recognized by the Puerto Rico Psychology Association as Psychologist of the Year (2011) and received an award for Contributions to Public Policy (2016).