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Mary Aviles, and How to Succeed in Balancing Professional and Family Life

Categories: 10th Anniversary, Community, Fun
Mary Avilés, picture from her Global Voices author page.

Mary Avilés, picture from her Global Voices author page.

Meet Mary Avilés, our Latin America editor, a position she embraced in October 2014.

She was brand new to Global Voices back then, but in few weeks she got used to the GV rhythm and now you could almost think she has been part of our community for a while.

Venezuela-born Mary has been living in the United States since 2001, when she started her master's degree in Journalism at the Florida International University in Miami.

She says:

I was fortunate enough to be chosen as a Knight Fellow 2013. I applied because I needed a boost in my career, in the media industry. Among very deep changes, and the idea of innovation and leadership this Stanford University-managed program ran in me. The truth is it was a wonderful experience, it gave me the chance to meet incredible people and gain tools to try our in my field of expertise.

Mary is one of the co-founders of Venezuela Decoded [1], that was born from a very personal necessity by some colleagues and her during the protests in Venezuela [2] in February 2014. As Venezuelan traditional press is under much stress due to changes in the industry and pressures from the government, there is much censorship and, what's worse, self-censorship. They decided to take the relevant information that was going on in social networks, specially Twitter, with the idea of integrate this channel to get a better coverage of the events. The website was reviewed in more than 50 international media outlets and was part of the official selection of the Gabriel Garcia Marquez award on Innovation.

Besides all that, Mary manages to be a mom of three girls. As she works from home for seven years, she can balance her professional and family. As her girls have always seen her working, they know their mom's work makes her happy. As a proud mother, she would like her daughters to embrace a professional career too, and to be faithful to her dreams.

Welcome to Global Voices family, Mary!