• PhD, Public Policy and Administration, Mississippi State University

• M.A., Habitat (Human Settlement Studies), Universidad Nacional de Colombia

• B.A., Political Science, Universidad Nacional de Colombia

Dr. Gina Rico Mendez is an associate research professor at the Social Science Research Center at Mississippi State University. Her applied research and evaluation work uses systems thinking to inform policy and practice across early childhood, food systems, and natural resource management. She leads the Systems Change Lab, which currently receives funding from the Mississippi Department of Human Services and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

She collaborates with the MSU Water Resources Research Institute to examine the interactions between human behavior and agricultural production, supporting the development of strategies for sustainable and profitable resource use in agricultural settings.

Her work draws on more than a decade of experience in Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning across the U.S. and international contexts. She has led and supported policy analysis, institutional assessments, and learning initiatives for programs funded by USAID, USDA, HRSA, and the U.S. Department of State. As research and learning manager for the USAID-funded Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish, she guided research partnerships across Africa and Asia and strengthened partners' capacity to use evidence. Earlier, she served as developmental evaluator and interim project director for USAID's Complexity-Aware Monitoring and Evaluation activity in Colombia, using adaptive learning tools to inform programming in conflict-affected settings. Her research and development work spans the U.S., Colombia, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Kenya, Nigeria, and Zambia.

Dr. Rico Mendez holds a PhD in Public Policy and Administration from Mississippi State University and is a former Fulbright scholar.

Dr. Rico Mendez's work is supported in part by MAFES.