Natalia studied Agriculture Sciences at EARTH University in her native Costa Rica, as well as Holistic Sciences at Schumacher College in the UK. From 2011 to 2017 she co-taught Permaculture Design Courses with Scott Pittman in Costa Rica—a very rich experience that allowed her to have an amazing mentor while meeting hundreds of students from multicultural backgrounds. She earned her Permaculture Diploma in Site Design and Teaching in 2017 and continues teaching to this day.

Her life has been guided by a sometimes annoying questioning of “who am I?” A feeling that this life is much more than what “The System” tells her, and always looking with suspicion towards technologies and systems that disconnect us from Nature. This questioning, along with an innate love for natural settings, led her to live as a monk in a Yogic Ashram in the mountains of Costa Rica for ten years. Aside from the exploration of invisible structures, inner realms of consciousness, and community living as a monk, she also designed and constructed naturally built homes, as well as incredible agroforestry, erosion control, and biological waste water treatment systems.

In her professional life, she co-founded Pronativas Network, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting and studying the rich potential of native plants of Costa Rica, which led her to coordinate workshops, conferences, and botanical field trips, as well as designing and implementing gardens and native nurseries in several regions of Costa Rica. She also works as an independent consultant for compost toilets, waste management, erosion control and water management. She works from the perspective of helping create a holistic system that is beautiful, efficient and enjoyable, and not a maintenance trap.

Natalia lives in Costa Rica still, not yet in a permanent place, but leaving in her path trees, banana circles, compost toilets, handmade houses, seedbanks, native gardens, water harvesting structures, beauty and many good friends. Her devotion is to the internal exploration, to find understanding of the interconnectedness of everything, overcoming the illusion that we are separate entities, so that all beings can live in joy, harmony, and beauty. She firmly believes that this understanding will bring the most coherent designs in any realm.