Maristella advises clients in the structuring and restructuring of debt across industries, including financial services, manufacturing, agribusiness, and energy. She has provided counsel in connection with project finance, corporate finance, and structured finance transactions, as well as in the establishment of lending facilities to serve critical sectors or marginalized segments of the population.

Maristella has also worked on sovereign development finance transactions with every country in Central America and in a wide range of sectors that cover water and sanitation, energy, health, education, and public finance. As a senior attorney at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), she contributed to the design of sovereign lending products for regional member countries, including the flexible financing facility to broaden the offering of financial products.

Maristella has a keen interest in risk management and seeks creative and practical solutions to adequately identify, allocate, and mitigate risks in support of corporate strategies. This interest, her trustworthiness, and her ability to obtain results informed key compliance roles she previously held.

Maristella was a Head of Integrity of the IDB. There, she led the adoption of the IDB Group Institutional Integrity Framework (intended to prevent and mitigate integrity risk and associated reputational impact in all private sector transactions) and supervised investigations of fraud and corruption.

Maristella also worked as Corporate Vice President and Chief Compliance Officer at a major Colombian financial institution, where she redesigned the compliance function. Her efforts resulted in the institution’s adoption and dissemination of a Code of Ethics and Conduct across all entities, implementation of an Anti-Bribery and Corruption program, and enhancement of the Anti-Money Laundering and Sanctions program, ensuring compliance with local laws and international best standards.
Finally, Maristella served as the Senior Policy Advisor and Managing Director for Institutional Integrity at the Development Finance Institution (DFC). She oversaw implementation of DFC’s integrity framework and provided advice on integrity due diligence and anti-corruption matters, designing and rolling out tools to be used by the legal team in operations structuring.

In conjunction with her sound transactional advice, Maristella advises development institutions and impact investors in the implementation of governance and contractual frameworks related to their policy considerations in lending transactions, and in the incorporation of their requirements in particular operations.

Education
JD, Universidad de los Andes, 1994