GI-TOC Staff Member

Cecilia Farfán-Méndez

Head of the North American Observatory, Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime

Cecilia Farfán-Méndez is Head of the North American Observatory at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime. Cecilia is an expert on Mexican organized crime, US-Mexico security cooperation, and gender mainstreaming. Her work focuses on understanding the business models of criminal groups.  Before joining GI-TOC, Cecilia was Head of Research at the Center for U.S-Mexican Studies at the University of California San Diego.

Cecilia has extensive experience with policy engagement, testifying before the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary and the House of Representatives Committee on the Judiciary on issues related to the U.S-Mexico border and criminal markets. In multilateral settings, she has consulted for the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, publishing the first UN-issue paper on gender and organized crime; the Organization of American States, collaborating on the development of the methodology for measuring the gendered impacts of firearms arms trafficking in the Western Hemisphere; the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), U.S. Institute of Peace, and USAID.

Cecilia regularly guest lectures at the U.S. Foreign Service Institute and has trained public officials from the U.S, Latin America, Caribbean, and Europe. Cecilia is a member of the Urban Violence Research Network and holds affiliations with the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at UC San Diego and the Center for Studies on Security, Intelligence, and Governance (CESIG) at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).

A Fulbright scholar, Cecilia received her doctorate in political science from UC Santa Barbara, her master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and her bachelor’s in international relations from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM).

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