Hola! I’m Cyntia
A multidisciplinary product designer at heart and a business strategist with over six years of experience in sales, marketing, and data analysis, based in New York.
Here to challenge conventional problem-solving approaches and co-create a resilient and sustainable future.
Changing climate
Growing up in Peru surrounded by nature, I became a sustainability enthusiast from a young age. However, I was unaware of the potential links between achieving gender equality, addressing the climate agenda, and building a sustainable future. These missing links and questions led me to explore the connections between women and climate. My thesis, Changing Climate: Elevating Women and Youth as Agents of Action, presents five design interventions to address climate issues from a gender perspective, aiming to catalyze action while achieving gender equality from different fronts.
Dandelight
An ergonomic emergency kit designed for women and young girls exposed to climate disasters.
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Securing access in frontline communities presents significant challenges, from obtaining resources and communication to providing specific products for women and girls, with energy being crucial for access to all of these. Dandelight addresses both energy access and specific product needs for women.
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Dandelight includes basic menstrual products designed to last approximately three months, such as tampons, pads, towels, water purification tablets, flasks, and antiseptic wipes—essential for proper menstrual care. Additionally, it features a solar panel charger and battery, complete with two types of phone charging cables: Type C and USB.
The Climate Intersection
A gender-focused platform and mapping tool that aims to engage organizations, volunteers, policymakers, and female advocates actively in climate leadership.
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The climate crisis is fundamentally a leadership crisis rooted in a patriarchal system. Instead of asking who holds leadership positions, the climate intersection seeks to highlight who is missing, which stories, voices, and policies should be amplified, and how to collaborate on both global and local scales to support gender initiatives and women, who are often the least represented in this space.
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Built on four pillars, the platform allows users to visualize data and track gender developments, amplify female voices by creating a database of women leaders and stories for climate negotiations, and explore gender-specific climate policies. Lastly, it enables organizations to track other initiatives around the world and scale partnerships to amplify their impact.
Steps
A mentor matching app, toolkit, and community platform designed for women who aspire to work, advance or make an impact in the climate space.
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In the promising green economy, which is projected to create 155 million jobs by 2030, an alarming 90% of women lack essential green skills and experience. This gap is exacerbated by significant barriers such as a lack of role models, gender pay disparities, and an overwhelming influx of complex climate jargon that remains inaccessible to many.
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By offering support through mentorship and easy access to curated climate resources, Steps provides multiple pathways for women to navigate the climate sector, shift their careers into the green space, or advance their careers as they transition from one area of the climate sector to another.
Thesis projects coming soon
Thesis projects coming soon
MFA Products of Design 2024:
Changing climate: Elevating Women and Youth as Agents of Action
Climate change | women | youth | gender equity | intersectionality
Design advisor for the Climate Tech Opportunity Report, a publication from the Oxford Climate Tech Initiative in collaboration with Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship. Released in November 2023: oxclimate.tech
Designs & collabs out there
Workshop lead for Women in Design NYC (WID) x SVA Vision Workshop (March, 2024)
Design leader for the Climate Innovation Ecosystem at Riffle Ventures, a framework mapping different types of entities and illustrating the complexity of domain-related tech ecosystems, featured in Forbes in 2024
