Dr. Catalina Crespo Sancho is the Ambassador of Costa Rica to the United States. She is a human rights specialist with over 20 years of experience in international development.

In 2018, the Costa Rican Congress elected her for a 4-year term as the Head of the National Human Rights Institution. During that period, the Central American and Caribbean Council of National Institutions of Human Rights also elected her as the 2019-2020 President, where she implemented a regional approach, to deal with the migration crisis.

From 2013 to 2018 Ambassador Crespo-Sancho worked at the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank on development issues in Latin America, Asia, and Africa.

At the World Bank, she worked on the prevention of violent conflict where she co-authored the UN/World Bank report, Pathways for Peace: Inclusive Approaches to Preventing Violent Conflict. She has also worked as a gender advisor for governments including the government of Costa Rica and Madagascar. Additionally, she collaborated with the private sector on corporate social responsibility.

Ambassador Crespo-Sancho was a professor at Columbia University and at the University of Georgia, where she taught and conducted research on topics of immigration, gender, and education.

Ambassador Crespo-Sancho holds a Ph.D. in Sociology of Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo, where she attended with a Fulbright Scholarship; she has an MA in International Education from Framingham State University and a BA in Psychology from Universidad de Monterrey in Costa Rica.