HFA Alumna Aurora Vergara Figueroa Appointed Minister of Education of Colombia

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Aurora Vergara Figueroa, who earned her doctoral degree in sociology from UMass Amherst in 2013, was appointed Minister of Education of Colombia on Feb. 28. Vergara Figueroa was the first Afro-Colombian student involved in a partnership developed between the UMass Amherst Afro-American studies program and Colombia. 

Throughout the last 15 years, Agustin Lao-Montes, professor of Sociology and Afro-American studies, as well as director of the African Diaspora graduate certificate program, and Amilcar Shabazz, professor and graduate program director of Afro-American studies, have recruited several Afro-Colombian students to UMass Amherst.

These students—like Vergara Figueroa—have gone on to work internationally and have significant global impact. After graduation, the students went on to do everything from building Africana Studies programs in Colombia to contributing to the democratic mobilization that has led to the new government of Petro and Márquez. 

Lao-Montes was Vergara-Figueroa’s dissertation chair, while Shabazz described Vergara Figueroa as "brilliant."

A specialist in Diaspora Studies and Latino, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Vergara Figueroa was born in Cali on May 14, 1987 and grew up in Istmina (Chocó). The daughter of María Teresa Figueroa Rojas and Aristóbulo Vergara Montoya, she graduated in 2003 from the Escuela Normal Superior de las Mercedes de Istmina and obtained her bachelor’s degree in sociology in 2008 from Universidad del Valle-Cali-Colombia.

She was formerly a professor in the Department of Social Studies at Icesi University in Cali, Colombia, between 2012 and 2022.