Juliana Maziero Castro

Learning and Event Support and Coordination | Capacity Building and Stakeholder Management , Freelance/ United Nations

turin, Italy

Capacity development specialist with close to ten years of experience designing and coordinating international learning initiatives linked to sustainable development and enterprise growth. Strong experience in stakeholder management, working across institutions, partners, and regions. Known for an operational approach and open to relocation where skills are needed. Fluent in 5 languages.

Contact Juliana Maziero Castro
Area of Expertise:
  • Capacity Building, Training, Advocacy
  • Communications, Media, Knowledge Management, Editor
  • Environment, Climate, Energy, Water, Sanitation
  • Social, Education, Gender, Youth, Child
  • Trade, Finance, Economics, Cooperation, Global
Professional Experience:

Over the past decade, my work has revolved around making international learning and collaboration actually function, in contexts where there are many stakeholders, limited time, and very little tolerance for confusion. I work at the intersection of learning design, event coordination, and operational delivery, often acting as the person who connects content, people, and logistics so that things move forward instead of stalling.

In recent years, this has taken the form of international consultancy work, supporting hybrid academies, online courses, and international meetings linked to development, employment, and sustainability. These are multi-week or multi-format initiatives, often involving different regions and languages, where my role is less about visibility and more about keeping the whole system running: aligning partners, formats, timelines, technical setups, and participant experience.

This way of working was consolidated during my time at the International Training Centre of the ILO (ITCILO) in Turin, Italy, first as a Junior Programme Officer for Green Jobs and Entrepreneurship (2021–2023), and later as an Associate Project Officer for the CATALYST Initiative (2024–2025). ITCILO is the training arm of the International Labour Organization, working globally with governments, social partners, and institutions. Across these roles, I coordinated international conferences, learning programmes, and multi-day training activities, both online and face to face, often managing several overlapping activities at once. The work required constant adjustment: dealing with last-minute changes, different institutional cultures, time zones, and technical constraints, while still keeping learning outcomes and engagement at the centre.

Between these institutional roles, I worked with the Boulder Institute of Microfinance and CRESOL, a large Brazilian cooperative banking system, designing and coordinating training programmes for cooperative managers. This meant moving between strategy and detail: interviewing senior managers, applying design thinking approaches, coordinating workshops and field visits, and managing logistics across Brazil and internationally, including activities in Italy, Portugal, and Peru. It was a role where credibility, organisation, and practical judgment mattered more than formal authority.

Earlier in my career, I worked as an independent consultant and as a Consulting Training Officer with The Development Alchemists, a COnsulting company owned by British in Italy, supporting international trainings and conferences for organisations within the UN system and beyond. I was also part of ITCILO in my first professional years (2016–2018), starting as an intern and later as a consultant, supporting large academies and forums in Europe and Africa, coordinating materials, participants, and live delivery.

Across all these contexts, what has remained constant is my proximity to delivery and management of stakeholders. I am used to working where things are concrete, messy, and time-bound, and where coordination, clarity, and follow-through make the difference between an event that happens and one that actually works.

Education:

I started with a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations (2010–2014, Brazil) at FACAMP, which is still the core of how I understand the world and my work. I was drawn early on to questions of power, institutions, negotiation, and international cooperation, and especially to how decisions taken at international level translate into very concrete consequences. My focus during these years was on development, multilateral institutions, and cooperation frameworks, always with an eye on how things actually work in practice rather than how they are supposed to work on paper.

While studying International Relations, I chose to pursue a second Bachelor’s degree in Economics (2010–2015, Brazil), also at FACAMP. This was not a change of direction, but a way to deepen my understanding. I felt that political and institutional analysis alone was not enough to explain why certain policies move forward and others fail. Economics gave me tools to read incentives, constraints, and trade-offs, and to connect values and intentions with financial and structural realities. Studying both disciplines in parallel forced me to constantly move between perspectives and to get comfortable with complexity rather than neat explanations.

I later completed a Master’s degree in Diplomacy and International Public Service (2015–2016, Spain) at CEI – Centro de Estudios Internacionales/Universidad de Barcelona, with a focus on development cooperation and human rights. This stage marked a shift from policy design in theory to implementation in practice. The programme emphasised coordination across institutions, negotiation in multicultural environments, and the challenges of turning frameworks into action. It also clarified my interest in learning, facilitation, and capacity building, as I saw how often results depend on whether people actually understand, engage, and take ownership.

Beyond formal degrees, I have continued studying throughout my professional life through targeted, applied courses. These include Communication for Development, Effective Report Writing, and Client-Centred Leadership, as well as continuous training related to facilitation methods and digital learning tools. These courses were always driven by practical needs in my work rather than by credentials, and aimed at improving how I design and support learning processes in real institutional contexts.

Affiliations and Achievements:

• Contributor and facilitator in international learning forums and high-level discussions linked to employment, social justice, and development cooperation.
• Active member of professional and alumni networks connected to international development and capacity building.
• Author of a short publication on solidarity economy and development perspectives.

Available for:

  • Consulting assignments
  • Job opportunities
  • Being headhunted – make me an offer

Years of Experience:

5-10 years

Highest Qualification:

Masters

Languages:

English, French, Spanish, portuguese, italian

Nationality:

Brazil , Italy

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