Mónica Rico is the Programme Officer for the INTER PARES | Parliaments in Partnership – EU Global Project to Strengthen the Capacity of Parliaments since September 2023. 

In her role as Programme Officer, her responsibilities include the coordination of a select number of peer-to-peer parliamentary partnerships, particularly in the context of Spanish and French – speaking partnerships, contribution to knowledge production and providing support to the Monitoring and Evaluation of the programme.

Before joining International IDEA, Monica worked for nearly two years at the Centre for European Policy Studies. She supported the Global Governance, Regulation, Innovation and the Digital Economy unit in the development and implementation of policy-oriented research projects on the most pressing topics in the EU regulatory agenda. On top of her project management and coordination duties, Monica also analysed Europe’s role in global governance, specifically in the context of its relations with Latin America. Likewise, she contributed to the development of guidelines for a digital connectivity masterplan for the EU’s Global Gateway initiative. Finally, she was part of the core team of the EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Dialogue project and provided research assistance to ORBIS, a Horizon Europe project aiming to enhance deliberative democracy through the use of digital tools.

Furthermore, during her four years of experience as a consultant and a young diplomat at the Colombian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, she contributed to the conceptualisation and implementation of Colombia’s public diplomacy strategy and external borders policy, with an aim to advance local development, democracy and peacebuilding, and culture and education as drivers of change. Thanks to her diplomatic background, Monica is a skilled negotiator and a competent stakeholder coordinator. In 2015 she was named as the third best young diplomat of her cohort, and ever since she has applied her diplomatic and conflict resolution skills in a variety of different settings, such as project management and partnership’s development.

Monica’s interests span international cooperation and development, public diplomacy, democracy, peacebuilding and EU-Latin American affairs, and how they intersect with the digital transformation and innovation.