The Making of an Ambassador

Interview by Melanie D.G. Kaplan

HER EXCELLENCY DR. CATALINA CRESPO-SANCHO, PhD ’09, is currently wrapping up her four-year term as Ambassador of Costa Rica to the United States. She previously spent more than 20 years in international development and human rights, working with the World Bank, United Nations and Inter-American Development Bank. Before her diplomatic posting, she served as Commissioner for the National Human Rights Institution of Costa Rica.

But the period of her life she views as foundational is the six years she spent in Buffalo, getting her PhD at UB. She immersed herself in human rights and political science studies, made lifelong friends who became her American family, met and married environmental engineering student Karl Bandilla, and gave birth to her second son. “Being in Buffalo was like a door to so many things that I wanted to do,” she says. “If I hadn’t gone to the university, I would not be the woman that I am today.”

My great-grandfather was very socially responsible. He used his own funds to create the first public home for the elderly that gave access to anyone—even if they didn’t have the money to pay for it. My family had a department store, and my grandfather was the first person in Costa Rica to set up a ‘solidarity association,’ which is a type of shared ownership with employees. So I grew up with that idea of, OK, you have to do the right thing, and the more you have, the more responsibility you have.

My parents were hippies. They had me when they were 18 and 19 so my grandpa was sort of my grandpa-dad. He was very traditional. My parents were not. When I was about 7, my dad got accepted into INCAE, a prestigious Harvard business school in Nicaragua at the time. We all went, and that was the time of the Nicaraguan Revolution.

At night, you could hear the war and the shooting. Eventually my mom took me and my brother back to Costa Rica, which has always been super peaceful. We don’t even have an army.

Every Christmas, I worked at the store. They would pay me very little and when I was probably 12, I told my grandpa I needed a raise. He said, ‘Oh, no, you don’t need a raise. You have everything you need. We’re just paying you symbolically.’ So I went and got signatures from a hundred people. Well, it seemed like a hundred. It was probably twenty. And I went to my grandpa and said, all these people say I do a really good job. He looked at me, smiled and said, ‘OK, I’ll pay you 100 colones,’ instead of 80 colones—so I was making nothing and then just a little bit more than nothing. But that was the first time I realized I could make a change.

I had gotten my master’s in international education from Framingham State University, through a program they had in Costa Rica, and was working with low-income schools, helping first graders to read. But I really wanted to explore the world, and I thought, you know, maybe if I go and study I could come back to Costa Rica and do cool stuff here. So I applied for a Fulbright, because I knew my dad wouldn’t pay for my degree. I was a girl and Costa Rica is still very conservative. I got the Fulbright but then they had a budget cut so they told me I’d have to wait until the next year. Then, a month before classes started, the embassy called me and said there’s extra money but the only university with an open slot is the University at Buffalo. I said, I’ll take it! But I was so nervous. By then I had a 6-year-old kid and I had no money. So I sold my car and some jewelry, and I left the country.

I remember the first three months, Lorenzo, my son, was like, ‘Ma, why did you take me away from my grandpa and school and my friends?’ And I was like, what did I do? And then I started making friends. One of my first friends worked at the international student office at UB. I showed up and was like, ‘Hi. I’m the international student.’ I was with my son, because I couldn’t leave him alone, and she took us in like part of her family. And then I started making other friends, who would help me with child care and invite us to their homes for Thanksgiving. And then I met my husband. So everything worked out in the end.

he Fulbright paid for only two years, so I did a lot of assistantships, anything I could do to get paid. I ended up working at the Graduate Student Association and then becoming president. I loved it. I was in charge of grants and we did all these programs, all this stuff for the students. I had to fight with the president and the provost for, I can’t remember, something the graduate students wanted.

And then I wanted to learn more about human rights. I sat in on a law school class taught by Makau Mutua, a super well-known human rights lawyer. And then I took a class in the political science department with Claude Welch, who was a human rights specialist, and I became his research assistant for two years. We did a lot of really cool human rights stuff on India and South Africa. I also started the chapter of Amnesty International at UB.

When I was at Columbia, I got a call from my Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They needed people and knew about my human rights background, so I ended up working three days a week there and two or three days a week at Columbia. But after a Fulbright you can only work for three years and then you’re required to go home. So I went back to Costa Rica, did some human rights stuff there and six months later got called by the Inter-American Development Bank in D.C. That led to the World Bank job, which I loved. I was there for almost five years working on human rights and gender and prevention of violent conflict. Then I got elected to be the Commissioner for the National Human Rights Institution of Costa Rica.

The job basically involved making the government accountable for following the law. In a nutshell, if you do a really good job, you make no friends and the government hates you. Let me put it this way: I did a really good job. I spent four years in probably the toughest job I’ve ever had in every sense of the word.

Many times. When my family and I were getting death threats, I remember my parents saying, ‘Why don’t you just go back to the World Bank? Just leave.’ But I said, ‘This is where I am. I’m going to finish.’

I don’t really like being in the public eye. In my last job, I was in the public eye every single day. Remember they called Margaret Thatcher the Iron Lady? They started calling me the Iron Lady. But I was scared all the time; it’s just that I appeared very strong. I’d come home and Karl would be like, ‘Hey honey, how was your day?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, they wanted to kill me.’ I believed this was the right thing to do and I still believe that. But I could have done it differently. I’m more American in the way that I do things—very direct. Costa Ricans are not that way. So I could have been a bit more diplomatic. And maybe that’s why my destiny put me here, to learn even more.

Toward the end of my tenure as commissioner of human rights, my president offered me the job of minister of women. I said, ‘No, but thank you very much.’ Then he said, ‘Catalina, what do you want? I want you on my team.’ So I said, ‘The best way that I can help your government and the Costa Rican people is in the international arena. That’s my expertise. So being ambassador to the U.N. would be great.’ Two months later I went to his office and he said, ‘I’m not going to name you ambassador to the U.N. I have a more important job for you: ambassador to the U.S.’ Usually these positions are given to people who donate a lot of money for campaigns or work on a campaign. I did neither.

I sat with my president and minister of foreign affairs and we had 17 points, including a visit from the president to the White House. So I’m like, OK, this is going to take a lifetime of work. Six months after I started, he got to visit President Biden, the first time in 18 years that a Costa Rican president had an official meeting with a U.S. president. Now, most of the 17 points are checked.

How little resources I have in order to do so much. This is the most important embassy for most countries around the world. So you’re going to have top people here in Washington. There’s a lot of investment here, a lot of networking and lunches and events that require funding. I don’t have the residence. I don’t have the funding. So I go to every event I can. I work nonstop. But I love it. And beyond the bilateral work with the U.S. and Costa Rica, I have good relations with most embassies in most regions. I get along really well with Africa, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Europe. They invite me to everything. And I show up.

The only thing I’m sure about is that I still want to work internationally and hopefully in work related to human rights. And I would love to work on conflict prevention, which I think is very needed right now. I’m really good at getting people and countries together.

Here’s an example. I was invited a few years back to give a talk in Sarajevo on conflict prevention and human rights in Bosnia and Herzegovina. There were maybe 100 people, mostly military men. During lunch, I talked to everyone. ‘Hello, I’m Catalina. I’m from Costa Rica and I’m going to be speaking after lunch.’ And one guy, who was full of medals, is like, ‘Why are you here? You guys don’t have an army. What can we learn from you?’ I responded with a smile. I told him after my speech, I’d see him again. My speech was about the important function of national human rights institutions in early-warning mechanisms and their contribution to democracy and conflict prevention. Afterward, he came up to me and said, ‘Dr. Crespo, now I understand why you are here.’ I laughed and he laughed and it was fine. So sometimes you don’t need force or aggressiveness to come to an agreement.

I’m learning that sometimes Americans forget how lucky they are to live in a country with so many opportunities. Not everyone here has a lot of opportunities, but the majority of people do. And those opportunities come with responsibility. When I talk about who my people are, yes, I’m Costa Rican and I have an affinity to Costa Ricans. But in the end, my people are the human beings in the world. It doesn’t matter where they are, who they are, what religion, what race, what color, what anything. If we would see things that way, we would be kinder to the world and to others. I think it’s doable.