Between places, cultures, and nations —
I build bridges.
[Alt text: Image of the Río Grande Gorge Bridge outside of Taos, New Mexico.]
Header photo: Rio Grande Gorge Bridge near Taos, New Mexico. Image by Daniel Schwen, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
Hey, there.
Lisa Munro, PhD
U.S.–Latin America Engagement Strategist
Bridging the Americas through policy, education, and mobility
I’ve often lived in the in-between—between places, families, cultures, languages, and nations. What once felt like an alienating and liminal space, one often ni aquí, ni allá, I now recognize as one of my greatest strengths: I am a bridge.
Bridges connect what might otherwise remain separate. They make movement possible. And they have to understand the terrain on both sides.
That is the work I feel called to do through my consultancy, Bridging the Americas.
I am a strategist, researcher, and partnership builder specializing in understanding the space between the United States and Mexico. I help organizations understand complex environments, navigate institutions and relationships, and turn good ideas into strategies that can actually work in practice.
My work sits at the intersection of strategy, partnerships, and mobility because those things are rarely as separate as they appear on an organizational chart.
That space between how something is supposed to work and how it actually works is where I do some of my best work.
My perspective comes from more than fifteen years of working, researching, writing, and building relationships across Latin America.
I served as a U.S. Peace Corps volunteer in post-conflict Guatemala, working alongside Indigenous Maya women on community-led development projects. I later earned a Ph.D. in Latin American history, training that taught me to investigate complex systems, recognize patterns across seemingly unrelated information, ask better questions, and understand how institutions became the way they are.
I eventually brought those skills into international strategy and partnership development in Mexico, building relationships across universities, government agencies, and other organizations.
Here’s what I’ve learned:
The problem presented at the beginning of a project is not always the problem that needs solving.
Here’s my general problem solving approach.
I read the documents.
Strategies, policies, plans, agreements, reports, organizational structures—the formal record tells me how a system is supposed to work and what people have already decided, promised, or assumed.
I look at the data.
I use available evidence to identify patterns, gaps, inconsistencies, and questions worth pursuing. Sometimes what isn't being measured is as revealing as what is.
I talk to people.
Organizations are made of people, and people often understand things that never make it into a report. Conversations help me understand priorities, relationships, institutional knowledge, and where decisions actually get made.
I go see for myself.
When place matters, I believe in fieldwork. I walk the neighborhood, ride the corridor, visit the site, observe how people use a space, and pay attention to where reality diverges from the plan.
I connect the dots.
This is where research becomes strategy. I bring the pieces together to identify what's actually happening, why it matters, and where there may be practical opportunities to move forward.