Cindy was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia. She is an Agronomical Engineer from Universidad Nacional de Colombia. During her Bachelor’s degree, she joined the “Genetics of Agronomical Traits” team where she developed her thesis project focused on marker assisted selection for tuber quality in Solanum phureja, a very valued potato species in Colombia. Since then, Cindy has been deeply interested in learning about plant breeding and genetics applied to crop improvement. Then, she joined the Soybean Breeding team at the University of Arkansas where she gained experience in conventional breeding and obtained her Master´s degree. Her research project was focused on physiology and QTL mapping for soybean salt tolerance. Cindy also did an internship at Dow AgroSciences, Colombia (Crop Protection Research team) and other with Bayer CropScience (Soybean Breeding). Currently, she is very interested in learning about horticultural sciences as a new member to the strawberry breeding team. Cindy is based in the Watsonville- Salinas area to coordinate trials and breeding plots planted there. She also enjoys hiking and dancing.