Hi, I am Clarissa Rios, a Peruvian scientist (Molecular Biologist) and also the founder and director of the social enterprise "Ekpapalek" (www.ekpapalek.com). Ekpapalek empowers Latin American students by offering programs of mentorship, internships and women empowerment for promoting their professional development (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8J0EqV1ISI).

I am also an advocate for gender equality as a recently selected "UN Women Global champion for women's economic empowerment" by Empower Women. Moreover, I am the director of "Ekpapalek Women", a project that empowers women in Latin-America through talks, workshops and online campaigns that aim to show new women's role models (http://www.ekpapalek.com/programa-mujeres)

As a scientist, I have been educated in Peru, Finland, Sweden, Germany and Australia. I have more than 12 years of experience in conducting and planning multilateral scientific projects. As a woman in science, I have represented different universities at scientific meetings all over the world. Moreover, I am a committee member at the life-sciences chapter of Women in Technology in Australia where I promote and organize events for reducing the gender gap in science.

I am joining Wikipedia as part of the team of #HERstory of Empower Women from UN Women. I am happy to contribute writing stories of women for Wikipedia.