Marta Arango is the co-founder and Director of CINDE – the International Center for Education and Human Development, the most prominent NGO working for children in Colombia. She was born in Colombia and educated there and in the United States where she received a PhD in Education from the University of California in Berkeley.

She has received a number of awards including the Simon Bolivar award, Colombia’s highest honor for personal contribution to the country; she has also been named Ashoka Fellow and Schwab Social Entrepreneur of the year. In addition to being in the BoD of Childwatch International, member of the World Forum for EarlyChildhood and of the  Executive Committee on Peace Building , Marta also represents CINDE in the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development, and, in relation to that, promotes a network of ECCD institutions in the Latin American Region.

CINDE has carried out research and development for children in families in poor communities for 38 years. It has also trained thousands of persons who today work at all levels of government and non-government organizations for children throughout the country. Marta is also an international advocate of innovative programs for children, particularly in the Latin American region.

In alliance with the University of Manizales, CINDE founded, and has long coordinated, a Master's program on Education and Social Development. CINDE co-founded the first doctoral program on children’s development in the country: an innovative inter-disciplinary degree on childhood and youth research. This program follows from the broad contextual view of children’s development that CINDE has always had: incorporating the human development of families and communities and carrying out research that is intrinsically connected to the development of policy and practice but that is nevertheless theoretically grounded and methodologically sound. This degree of connection between research and practice within the same institution is unique in Colombia.