Maria Cristina Caldas Albornoz

Maria Cristina Caldas is a global development professional and Beeck Latin America Merit Scholar currently pursuing her master's at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Her work is driven by a clear focus: making sustainable infrastructure finance and public-private partnerships work for emerging markets..

On campus, Maria is actively involved in shaping the Georgetown community. She works directly with the Global Human Development (GHD) Program Director as a Social Justice Assistant, designing initiatives that explore the broader social and economic dimensions of development. She also serves on the executive board of the SFS Energy Club as Outreach Co-Lead, building bridges across the university's energy and infrastructure network.

Before moving to Washington, D.C., Maria Cristina spent five years leading A Mi No Me La Hacen (AMNMLH), a donor-funded NGO she founded in Lima, Peru. As Executive Director, she managed cross-sector initiatives and negotiated public-private partnerships from the ground up. Alongside, she managed multilateral projects for UNESCO, the Peruvian Ministry of Culture, and different diplomatic missions in Perú. 

Today, Maria combines this on-the-ground leadership with a strong analytical background, with a curiosity to understand the potential and intersection of energy, water, and human capital in emerging economies. She specializes in project evaluation, focusing on the political economy of infrastructure: specifically, how better public institutions are critical not only to closing the service gap, but to sustaining and maintaining those investments in countries facing systemic corruption and political instability.

Summer Internship

During the summer, I had the opportunity to complete two internships that deepened my understanding of how infrastructure investments in low- and middle-income countries impact economic growth and livelihoods.

At Q2 Impact, a boutique consulting firm based in D.C., I worked as a Data and Impact Evaluation Intern. I led the writing of a case study on a major geothermal energy project in Honduras, which was built through a partnership between a Development Finance Institution (DFI) and the private sector. My role involved synthesizing findings into a comprehensive report to understand the core lessons of the project. Specifically, I analyzed the partnership between the DFI and the private sector, as well as the power agreement with the Honduran government, to see how they delivered not only infrastructure but also public value to citizens. In doing so, I honed my understanding of how public-private partnerships and DFIs bridge the infrastructure gap. I also explored the complexities of project finance and cost-benefit analysis, and looked at what can be done in the future to deliver accessible, resilient, and sustainable energy. Working with geothermal energy further solidified my interest in becoming an energy sector analyst, with a specific focus on renewables and critical minerals.

As a complement to that experience, I joined Global Communities as a Governance Intern. There, I helped draft the strategic governance structure for a Guatemalan Coalition, whose main purpose is to serve as a technical board for the national government and support their policy outreach for social housing and livelihoods.

Both internships were essential in deepening my knowledge of how investments and partnerships are vital to delivering better services and improving livelihoods through key infrastructure, such as energy and social housing.