ILANA BENADY is a Gibraltarian who studied and lived in the UK for more than fifteen years, graduating in Politics and Social Anthropology from the University of Kent at Canterbury.
Initial notions of a career in journalism led to her working for a BBC local radio community programme in Bristol and a long spell of travel and work in South, Central and North America and Europe. This was followed by a year spent in Gibraltar working as a radio, newspaper and magazine contributor and founding and coordinating the local Friends of the Earth group.
At some point in her mid 20s she decided that journalism wasn't for her, moved back to the UK and took up a career in international development. Her work at the Oxfam headquarters in Oxford led her to several countries in the Middle East and Latin America and the Caribbean. One such assignment was a six-week stint in the Dominican Republic and Haiti in early 1996. Ilana's instant love affair with the Dominican Republic was sealed by a relationship with one of its citizens, photographer Pedro Guzmán, who she met during her third visit to the country, in 1998.
She settled there and married Pedro in 1999. At first, she lived in the central province of Cotui, working as a fundraising and communications advisor to campesino groups in Cotui and Salcedo as a cooperante (skills-sharing volunteer) for British agency ICD (now Progressio), before moving to the capital, Santo Domingo, where they lived for nine years. Initially she went back to working for Oxfam GB, as Communications Officer for Central America and the Caribbean based in the Santo Domingo office.
After the Oxfam GB regional office moved to Mexico City and her son was born in 2000 she took a career break and did not return to full-time work until the 2004 crisis in Haiti, when she spent several months working as Oxfam GB's communications officer. Since then, she has worked as a freelance consultant for Oxfam and a number of other international organisations (including Plan International and Unicef), Dominican media in English like DR1.com and several PR agencies and private clients, providing research, communications, fundraising, translating and editing services.
Ilana and Pedro and their son Lucas now live in Punta Cana on the east coast.
Ilana is the co-author of Expat FAQ: Moving to and Living in the Dominican Republic and The Culture Smart Guide to the Dominican Republic (both with Ginnie Bedggood) and Aunt Clara's Dominican Cookbook and Traditional Dominican Cookery, (both with Clara González).
