A communications and media professional with more than 15 years experience in supporting innovation, development and gender-focused activities for United Nations, civil society and intergovernmental agencies in Africa, Europe and the United States, Raquel is a former Diplomat with the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights where she lead the deployment of Europe’s first online platform for hate crime monitoring and reporting.
She has also worked with the International Organization for Migration (UN Migration) in Somalia as Head of the Strategic Communications and Media Unit for the Somalia Stabilization Initiative, supporting the federal government with reconciliation and recovery efforts, and contributed to IOM Libya's Migrant Resource and Response Mechanism as Community Engagement and Communications Officer.
A natural problem solver, Raquel is Co-Founder and former Chief Product Officer at Jetstream Africa, a supply chain platform simplifying export logistics for African agriculture suppliers, and Co-Founder and former Managing Partner at Lou Bess? Dakar Farmers Market, Senegal’s first farmers market, where she played a vital role in designing a community-focused approach to promoting economic growth for local producers.
Raquel is also a founding member of the Slow Food International Dakar Convivium and joined the official Senegalese delegation to Terra Madre 2016, a biennial convening of food activists working to establish systems of clean and fair food.
She serves as adviser to technology startups across East and West Africa, is a former fellow at pan-African tech accelerator MEST Africa, and worked with UNICEF as a Digital Strategy Consultant from 2006-2018.
Raquel is the Co-Editor of No Tees Please: Why Africa Aid Campaigns #FAIL, a crowdsourced inquiry into the practices of inventing disadvantageous aid campaigns; and worked as Campaign Manager for Social Media Week Lagos’ #55FORWARD initiative, bringing together ambassadors from fifty-five African nations to discuss how they use social media to meet the needs of a rapidly increasing youth population.
Renowned for connecting people across her expansive network, and building strong, resilient communities, Raquel facilitates partnerships that strengthen cross-border trade for SMEs and mentors young women in leadership and discovering themselves unapologetically.