Maria-Cristina Silva, Senior Technical Manager, Industrial Solutions, provides technical industrial expertise on offset project review and verification oversight in the California and Washington compliance, and voluntary carbon markets. MC also contributes to the development and approval of innovative ACR GHG emissions reduction quantification methodologies and verification strategies for carbon markets. She has over a decade of experience working in sustainability related projects in North, Central, and South America, as well as in India. Since joining ACR, she has been involved in a diversity of projects that range from creating a tool to certify climate friendly rice grown in the US, to developing methodologies that reduce methane emissions from animal and human waste, as well as from orphan oil and gas wells.

MC transitioned to climate change science work after working with international volunteer organizations and community development projects. She has worked with the Peace Corps, Global Citizen Year, IDEX Fellows and Tandana Foundation, where she shared with and learned from some of the most disadvantaged populations in their day-to-day struggles from the impacts of a changing climate. MC received her Professional Science Master's from the Department of Ecosystems Science and Sustainability at Colorado State University, and a M.A. in Sustainable Development and Peace & Conflict Studies from the United Nations University for Peace in Costa Rica. Her studies include supporting a scientific mission to the Huascaran National Park in Peru to study the impact of climate change in Tropical Glaciers, participating in Rocky Mountain Sustainability Science Network (RMSSN) at the Yellowstone and Grand Tetons National Parks empowering citizen scientists to join the fight against climate change, and interning with Ecuador’s Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano in in its work with the Climate and Development Knowledge Network (CDKN) to assist countries in developing policies that eradicate poverty while fighting climate change.