Sharoll Fernandez Siñani — Founder & Executive Director
Aymara educator, policy strategist, and artist, Sharoll leads Zera Bolivia’s model for community-owned learning. She is the first Indigenous Aymara woman from Bolivia to graduate from Harvard (Ed.M., Education Policy & Analysis; Power, Identity & Justice), admitted via a rare merit-based exception. Over the past decade, she has designed and implemented creative education programs from the Andes to New York, integrating high-context Indigenous knowledge with learning science and systems design. Her work emphasizes real community agency—clear governance, transparent measurement, and educator training—so capacity stays local and outcomes endure. As a museum-exhibited artist and the author of the trilingual To Senkata and My Dead, she uses art to catalyze civic dialogue and critical thinking alongside rigorous pedagogy. She has advised leaders of multi-million-dollar organizations and builds partnerships that align cultural integrity with scalable impact.
Focus areas: education policy and learning design; measurement & evaluation; Indigenous governance and community capacity; arts-based pedagogy; behavioral economics and systems design.
Selected work: Metamorfosis visual series; exhibitions including the Queens Museum and Harvard Graduate School of Education.
Languages: Spanish, English, Italian.
About Aymara: I did not learn it as a child—the transmission was interrupted in my family due to survival and social mobility strategies that prioritized Spanish—and today I maintain a disciplined (re)learning process to recover it.
Sharoll’s leadership positions Zera Bolivia to deliver evidence-based, culturally rooted programs that move communities from recipients of aid to architects of their own prosperity.
OUR TEAM
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.“
–Nelson Mandela
Wilmer Machaca Leandro Communications Manager
Wilmer studied Sociology at UMSA (Universidad Mayor de San Andrés) and Systems Engineering at USB. He was a member of the Katarista Indianista Movement MINKA , an activist from the Heroes’ Square from 2000 to 2005 and a College political leader from 2008 to 2012. He considers himself a cyber-activist on issues of Indianism, Katarism and indigenous people on Social Networks. He is a member of the Autonomy Forum, the Internet Bolivia foundation and the Jichha group.
Juan Pablo Vargas Rollano Content Director
Juan Pablo Vargas Rollano is a writer, educator, lover of exercise and poetry: a millennial q’iwa who walks looking at the stars. He has published various studies on Bolivian literature in the collection “La crítica y el poeta” (from the Institute of Literary Research of UMSA) and in “Classica Boliviana” (magazine of the Bolivian Society of Classical Studies), as well as texts of current opinion in La Razón, Muy Waso, Jichha and World Crunch. He is Content Director at the non-profit educational organization Zera Bolivia. He published the collections of poems “Anancias espirituales” (2022) and “Gabriela se dice de tres formas” (2023). He studied Literature at UMSA and graduated with a thesis on religious poetry from the colonial period. He is currently dedicated to secondary education in literature and research on the understanding of sexual diversity in aymara philosophy. himself a cyber-activist on issues of Indianism, Katarism and indigenous people on Social Networks. He is a member of the Autonomy Forum, the Internet Bolivia foundation and the Jichha group.
Sophia Vahdati Researcher and European Outreach Officer
A British poet, Sophia studied Latin American literature at the University of Cambridge and wrote her dissertation about San Pedro prison, an infamous prison in La Paz, Bolivia. She’s passionate about education and is now working on a documentary on race and social stratification in La Paz.
Tristan Chaim Thoma Fundraising Director
With a background in Organizational Psychology and IT Systems Management, Tristan specializes in assessing, developing and implementing new business models that leverage transformative technology. Leading winning teams at The World Bank’s Global Ideas for Action competition and 1st-prize at the 2017 & 2018 Consensys Hackathons, he is passionate about Blockchain’s potential for social impact and sustainability. He has lectured at Universities like NYU, Rutgers Business School, and CUNY, and speaks regularly at Blockchain conferences around the world. Tristan tries to help the world. Sometimes he succeeds, sometimes he doesn’t. But he definitely tries.
Gabriel Garcia Daumen CFA Finance Director
Gabriel Garcia Daumen, CFA, has 16 years of experience in equity and industry research, manager selection and portfolio construction. He is currently the Head of Research and Direct Investments at Stelac Advisory (a Multi-Family office) overseeing product selection for 40 families investing across multiple asset classes, geographical locations and investment structures. He is the former Head of Offshore Mutual Funds and Alternative Investments, UBS AG New York where he spent 8 years establishing the third party manager platform and providing recommendations on an asset class and portfolio level. Gabriel started his career in New York as an Equity Research analyst covering the Latin America Telco space with Deutsche Bank. He has a BA Economics from UCAB and a Masters in Finance from Brandeis University.