Melissa Patiño Pérez doesn’t separate the environmental from the human. In over a decade working in rural development, climate adaptation, and value chain strengthening, she’s learned that the two are inseparable and that’s the lens she brings to her new role as Progreso’s Country Manager for Colombia.
An environmental engineer with a Master’s in Environment and Development, Melissa has spent her career on the ground, alongside communities, cooperatives, and institutions navigating the real tensions between agricultural production and ecosystem health. Her work has spanned climate change adaptation, regenerative agriculture, food security, and value chain development, always oriented toward the same question: how do we make sustainability generate genuine opportunity for the people and territories involved?
In her new role, she’s particularly drawn to the potential she sees in Colombia’s coffee and cacao sectors, not just as economic engines, but as spaces where the right kind of support can meaningfully shift conditions for rural families. She comes to Progreso as eager to learn from the cooperatives and communities she’ll work with as to contribute her own experience.
Outside of work, Melissa leads a book club, something that tells you as much about her as her CV does. She sees reading as a way of inhabiting other worlds and perspectives, and considers it one of the things that keeps her genuinely empathetic in work that asks you to understand many different realities at once.
We’re glad she’s here.
