Biographical sketch

Professor Adriana Vilela is one of the most remarkable specialists in the field of education in the United States of America and Latin America. Originally from Argentina, today lives in Washington D.C., where she has acted as Coordinator of the only organization at a a regional level which encourages collaboration and interaction among Ministers of Education and teachers from the different countries in the Americas, the Inter-American Teacher Education Network (ITEN) within the Department of Human Development and Education (DHDE) at the Organization of American States (OAS). ITEN has the purpose of contributing to the improvement of quality of education in the Americas. She is also an educational specialist at the same office at the OAS. We are honored to present her as Distinguished Visiting Professor of the UAEH in the International Image Fest, FINI 2016, as its main theme is Education.

In 1973, Professor Adriana Vilela obtained a National Certificate as Teacher of English as a Foreign Language issued by the Institute of Modern Languages located in Rosario, Argentina and in 2000 she obtained the degree of Master of International Education Development with a focus in ICT use in education from the School of education, Teachers College, Columbia University in New York.

During 2007 Professor Vilela acted as Executive Director of World Links for Development (WorLD) a program that facilitated teacher profesional development in the use of ICTs in the classroom. WorLD trained over 200,000 teachers in 22 countries. Previous to that she was the Latin American and Caribbean Director for the same program and coordinated programs in collaboration with the Ministries of Education of El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Brazil, Panamá, Perú, Paraguay, Chile and Colombia. She was also in charge of the teacher professional development activities for the education initiative "Macedonia Connects" under which teachers from all secondary schools and 50% of teachers from primary schools participated in workshops to learn how to use ICTs in their classrooms.

The devotion that Professor Vilela has for the steady development of international education has led her to seek different opportunities for young people, especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, by designing and implementing programs at the international level related to the pedagogical use of ICTs.

In her native country, Adriana was a teacher, principal and supervisor in the public education system of Argentina. She was co-coordinator of the Network of Schools (Español: Todos En La Red (TELAR). She was alo the founder and for more than 20 years, director of "Windlands" a school dedicated to English language teaching in Argentina.