M. Velez is an Associate Professor at the School of Management, Universidad de Los Andes. She has a Ph.D. in Natural Resource Economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and her research focuses on decision-making and institutional design for environmental and social problems in developing countries. By using economic experiments in the field, she studies the problems of collective action and the management of natural resources in rural communities. Her current research includes the evaluation of payment for environmental services design and the study of the impact that collective property has on institutional change, the countryside, and the well-being of Afro-Colombian communities living on the Pacific Coast.