Marcela holds a B.Sc. from University of Antioquia (Colombia) from 2009, an MSc. in Economics with a Major in Innovation and Change from the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (Germany) from 2013. After her master studies she worked first in the Education Planning and Statistics Unit of Medellin City Hall where she was responsible for applied research in the economics of education, especially the measurement of education quality. In 2017 she worked as a Knowledge Management Consultant in the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington DC where she helped use data analytics techniques to improve knowledge management.