Gloriela Iguina-Colón is a social policy researcher, dialogue facilitator, and mindfulness practitioner who is committed to co-creating spaces and policies that foster belonging and joy. Her engagements span across policy, spirituality, and interpersonal relationships, and she aims to bridge people across ideologies and identities.

As a researcher, she has co-led and co-designed evaluations of social service programs and provided strategic support to improve service delivery for low-income people. She has worked across multiple institutions, including public housing authorities, community colleges, financial counseling centers, and philanthropic organizations.

As a facilitator, she has developed and co-created more than a dozen dialogues and collaborative spaces for students, community members, and researchers to develop deeper self-awareness and move towards sustainable, structural change.

As a mindfulness practitioner, she has engaged in multiple trainings, dialogue spaces, meditation practices, and dharma talks (Buddhist teachings) and aims to live every moment present and compassionately.

Gloriela is a proud Nuyorican – Puerto Rican New Yorker – and is a continuation of her ancestors on the archipelago and in the diaspora who ceaselessly assert their right to joy, creativity, community, the land, and self-determination.

She is deeply grateful for her teachers for inspiring her and paving the path for a better world and planting seeds of compassion in her, including her mother, her aunt, her partner, her MDRC colleagues, Thich Nhat Hanh, Paulo Freire, mushim ikeda, john a. powell, the Program on Intergroup Relations at the University of Michigan team, Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy team, and East Bay Meditation Center community. She graduated from the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan – Ann Arbor.