Ana Cristina Vaz is a specialist in communication for development and international cooperation. Since November 2015, she leads the Communication department of the Program for the Consolidation of Economic Governance and of Public Finance Management Systems in African Countries of Portuguese Official Language and East Timor in a multi-country context, of South-South and triangular cooperation, and with relevant partners of CPLP public finance management systems and of international cooperation.

Ana recently took responsibility for Interim Communication of the United Nations Joint Offices of UNDP, UNFPA and UNICEF in Cabo Verde and, during nine months, gave support and counseling to the agencies in diverse activities, having been delegated the task of developing the Communication Strategy for the Joint Office and the Communication Strategy of the Office in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Previously, she was head of Communication in the Institute of Biodiversity and Protected Areas of Guinea-Bissau, IBAP, with the responsibility to integrate the communication circuit of the six Protected Areas and placing environmental protection of Guinea-Bissau at the top of the national agenda and the institution in the sight of international partners.

Her portfolio scopes collaborations and consultancies in communication and development, journalism, training, and collaborations in areas that reach from economics, politics, and international cooperation, environment conservation, gender and citizenship. In her path, she’s been dealing with parliaments, governments, audit courts and international organizations of development and cooperation for some Portuguese speaking African countries, such as the European Union, the World Bank and the International Union for Conservation of Nature, among others.

Ana Vaz is Masters in Development and International Cooperation, by the Institute of Economy and Management of Lisbon's Technical University, with a background in Communication Sciences and Culture and a Journalism major.

She works in the field of communication for development since 2010, always complementing her two academic fields. Ana has interest in the development and promotion of sustainable development, in which she has established personal projects, such as the platform  Criar Valor (Create Value) which aims to promote and make visible “ideas with value” and the multimedia project  NUMNA, directed at young adults’ and children’s literature, through the promotion of African values and culture, gender equality and children’s rights. Still in the literary and journalistic field, she’s been doing interviews for the production of the documentary “Lessons of the Past in the Future’s Foundation – Institutional, Social and Cultural Memory of Guinea-Bissau”.
Ana led the development of many publications, interviews, articles, videos and journalistic works, collaborated with the África Lusófona Magazine, Sou Capaz Program, of RDP-África and with LUSOMONITOR.