Paula joined the Climate Science Alliance in 2020 as their first Climate Resilience Fellow, responsible for overseeing and coordinating the Alliance's bi-national efforts in the Baja California region. Paula then went on to join the Alliance as the Science Program Manager. 

Born in Mexico City, and raised in San Diego, Paula has studied climate change, and its impacts, from a variety of angles. As an undergraduate at the University of California, Santa Barbara—where she received a BS in Aquatic Biology—she began studying the carbon sequestration potential of Mexico’s mangrove ecosystems. Then, as a masters student in the Scripps Institution of Oceanography’s Climate Science & Policy program, Paula completed a capstone project on the threat that climate change impacts, particularly rising seas, pose to coastal cultural heritage sites in Puerto Rico. Also at Scripps, Paula has previously worked as a researcher and communications associate for the Aburto Lab, where her work has included distilling research on mangroves and conservation into policy and outreach materials intended for a non-scientific audience. Before joining the Climate Science Alliance, she also served as a project coordinator to the California Collaborative for Climate Change Solutions and for Dr. Ram Ramanathan—where her work involved supporting the Climate Education for All educational initiative, which aims to bring climate education to adults across America in locally relevant terms through engagement with community leaders. Paula has also been a research diver, and volunteer interpreter at an immigration nonprofit, and is currently a college-access mentor for underserved high-school students in San Diego.