María Carla Chicuén is founding executive director of CasaCuba at Florida International University, where she leads the effort to build this cultural center to preserve Cuban heritage. Previously, Chicuén managed special projects in the Miami Dade College president’s office. Earlier in her career, she was a consultant for integration and trade at the Inter-American Development Bank in Panama City and for the education sector of the Latin America and Caribbean region at the World Bank. Chicuén is the author of Achieve the College Dream: You Don’t Need to Be Rich to Attend a Top School. A term member of the Council of Foreign Relations, she earned her bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and a master’s in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.