Maria S. Floro is Associate Professor of Economics at American University in Washington DC, teaching in the fields of gender, development finance, and development economics. In 1987, she received her doctorate from Stanford University. Her publications include books on Credit Markets and the New Institutional Economics and “Women's Work in the World Economy”, monographs and several journal articles on topics such as export promotion, work intensity, time use and well-being, gender and financial crises, informal sector, quality of employment, vulnerability and poverty, credit and asset ownership. She has collaborated with researchers, women’s groups and community organizations in Thailand, Philippines Ecuador and Bolivia in developing gender-sensitive research methods and in conducting fieldwork in urban poor communities. She is a co-director of the Graduate Program on Gender Analysis in Economics at American University and a board member of the International Association for Feminist Economics (IAFFE).