IMPULSANDO SOLUCIONES COMPARTIDAS

The creation of Alianza MX (Alianza MX) in 2019 was achieved by integrating three preexisting UC system-wide programs: 

Alianza MX supports:

Supports UC’s role as Mexico’s primary institutional research and scientific partner.

Mobilizes talent and funding for US-Mexico research teams, who explore new ideas and create new knowledge across diverse areas, from STEM to social science, the arts and humanities.

Contributes to UC’s efforts to train a future generation of researchers, who understand the reality on both sides of the border.

Through binational, action-research programs, Alianza MX provides innovative solutions to complex challenges facing the United States and Mexico in issues such as:

Promotes an innovation and entrepreneurship agenda for economic and social prosperity.

Fosters a binational workforce, through two-way US-Mexico student and professor mobility programs.

Engages with the private and public sectors and other stakeholders on both sides of the border to build resilient and informed public policies, advancing the US-Mexico cooperation agenda.

Supports UC’s role as Mexico’s primary institutional research and scientific partner.

Encourages largescale, high-impact action research to advance the US (California)-Mexico agenda.

Promotes an innovation and entrepreneurship agenda for economic and social prosperity.

Fosters student mobility for a binational competitive workforce.

Engages with a diversity of stakeholders to build awareness around strategic issues for the US and Mexico.

Ma. Isabel Studer, Ph.D.
Director of Alianza MX

About the Director

Ma. Isabel Studer, Ph.D.  has a unique career in government, academia and civil society. She was Director for Strategic Partnerships in Latin America and Executive Director for Mexico and Central America at The Nature Conservancy. Isabel founded the Global Institute for Sustainability and was Leader of Energy and Corporate Sustainability at EGADE Business School at Tecnológico de Monterrey. In the Mexican government, she held high-level positions at the Agency for International Cooperation for Development and the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and for Environment and Natural Resources. She was also Director of Research for the Commission for Labor Cooperation (CLC) in Washington, DC.

Senior Fellow at the Arsht Rockefeller Resilience Center of The Atlantic Council, she is currently President of the Board of the Mexican Climate Initiative and member of the Board of Directors of the World Environment Center (WEC), the Dow Chemical Company’s Sustainability Experts’ Advisory Board (SEAC), and Chair of the Climate Committee in Mexico’s Advisory Council on Water. 

A Fulbright and Ford Scholar, Isabel has been recognized with the Johns Hopkins University’s Distinguished Alumna Award in 2020 and twice by Forbes Magazine as one of the “100 Most Powerful Women in Mexico.” She earned her PhD and a M.A. at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University and a BA degree in international relations from El Colegio de México.

Meet our binational team

Staff