Jimena Vallejos, MPA, is a ZERO TO THREE Fellow. She is Southern-Cone Director for IMAGO Global Grassroots.
Ms. Jimena Vallejos is the Southern-Cone Director for IMAGO Global Grassroots. IMAGO Global Grassroots engages with nonprofit grassroots organizations and social enterprises to help them design a path to scale their impact while remaining true to their core values and identity. One of IMAGO’s focus areas is Early Childhood Development and Education (ECDE), on which they work with organizations, business entities, and governments to address the critical questions for advancing early childhood programs and systems. In addition, Ms. Vallejos works as a consultant for the Delivery Unit of the Government of Paraguay in development of an ECD strategy called “Kunn’u,” which seeks to improve coordination across sectors to ensure basic services of health, education, and protection can reach the same children at the right time.
At age 14, Ms. Vallejos volunteered with a UNICEF relief program called “the return to happiness,” which focused on young children impacted by a devastating fire in her city that disproportionately affected those living in a poor urban settlement. This early experience gave her a deep passion for early childhood development. Ms. Vallejos has over seven years of program management experience in poverty elimination programs, microfinance, and financial inclusion. She is from Asunción, Paraguay, where she started her career in development as a manager of the Poverty Stoplight, an innovative and participatory assessment tool to measure and address multidimensional poverty that has been replicated in over 15 countries.
Ms. Vallejos holds a Master of Public Administration in Development Practice at Columbia University and a Bachelor of Social Work from Washburn University. She participated in the Break the Cycle of Children’s Health Disparities at Emory University in which she co-wrote a book chapter on Barriers and Opportunities for young caregivers to provide nurturing care in low-income communities of Paraguay.
