In addition to her training as a programming analyst and her practice of traditional and herbal medicine in her community, Amelia Reyna Monteros Guijón has a solid career in community organization, leadership, gender issues, human rights and indigenous peoples, as well as the protection of traditional knowledge. She was a founding member of the Original Peoples and Barrios Council in 2007. As a representative of the Advisory Board of the National Commission for the Development of Indigenous (Comisión Nacional para el Desarrollo de los Pueblos Indígenas—CDI), in 2013 she was part of the Mexican delegation to the negotiation of the international legal instrument for the protection of traditional knowledge with the Intergovernmental Committee on Intellectual Property and Genetic Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Folklore (ICG) of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in Geneva, Switzerland. She is currently an advisor to the Department of Rural Development and Community Equity, representing Nahua migrants in Mexico City, and a CDI advisory board member for the 2015-2018 period. She also chairs the organization Ac-Yacto (“he who helps us”). She speaks Spanish and Nahuatl, and also understands Zapotec and Mazahua.
