Paz Portales is Programme Specialist and Programme Coordinator in the Higher Education team of the Education Sector at UNESCO Headquarters since October 2016. Her field of work is the right to education, equity and inclusion in higher education, contributing to the mandate of Sustainable Development Goal 4.

She recently acted as General Coordinator of the UNESCO World Conference on Higher Education in Barcelona in May 2022. Previously she was the Regional Education Programme Coordinator at the UNESCO Regional Bureau for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean and responsible for the creation and coordination of the Regional Strategy on Teachers in the same region.