Maria graduated in History and has a Master’s degree in Heritage Art and Restoration.

Maria has been an employee of the Municipality of Lisbon since 1981, mainly linked to the areas of culture and social rights. She coordinated technical and research teams concerned with, for example, public space, Portuguese tiles and Portuguese sidewalk. She has a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Science and Technology Foundation and has participated in several European projects.

Between 2018 and 2021 Maria was the coordinator of the Homeless Integration Planning Centre – NPISA, where she worked with a wide network of social partners. During the Covid-19 pandemic, she set up a new model for homeless people and coordinated the base of operations. The new model primarily involved health screening in the context of Covid-19. All people were received until vacancies were exhausted. The model ended up responding to most vulnerabilities and social problems. In these places, the model included access to physical and mental health, food, hygiene, social and professional referral, as well as access to social integration programs such as Housing First.

Maria currently works in the Lisbon Municipal Police, in the Division for Prevention, Security and International Relations, NPSRI. NPSRI carries out work on the ground with police officers, in the field of vulnerabilities and behaviour prevention, in one of the territories of Lisbon applying the concept of Community Policing. It is developing work to approach two other territories (one urban, one forestry), also within the framework of Community Policing.