She is someone who has always stood for what she believes and is willing to keep on fighting for it. María Corina is the eldest of four daughters of former tennis star player Corina Parisca Pérez and psychologist and businessman Enrique Machado Zuloaga, linked to steel company Sidetur that was expropriated in 2012 by Hugo Chavez.
She attended a Catholic boarding school and is an Industrial Engineer graduated from Universidad Católica Andrés Bello, first of her class. During her engineering studies she was director of the university’s magazine Ingenio and the Engineering Student Center. She also got a Diploma in Finance at Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración (IESA) in Caracas, first of her class as well.
Machado has worked in the city of Valencia in the industrial sector as Program Coordinator in automobile parts for companies such as Gates de Venezuela and Filtros Wix . Between 1993 and 1994 she was a professor of the Department of Human Resources Management in the Department of Industrial Engineering at her alma mater and was a member of the boards of companies such as SIVENSA and SINERGIA.
In 2005 she received the Meritorious Achievement Award from the Ballenger Foundation in North Carolina; member of the Venezuelan Chapter of the International Women’s Forum, network of Young Global Leaders and ASHOKA group of social entrepreneurs. In 2009, she participated in the program of Public Policy and Leadership at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.
Co-founder with her mother of the ATHENA Foundation for the care and rehabilitation of orphaned and abandoned youth, and OPORTUNITAS Organization for the financial, technical and administrative assistance programs for children from households in extreme poverty. Along with Alejandro Plaz she was co-founder of Sumate, a non-governmental organization dedicated to the promotion and defense of political rights of citizens.
In 2010 she resigned as president of Sumate, and a week later ran as a candidate for the National Assembly of Venezuela and became deputy with the most votes in parliamentary elections on 26 September 2010. She has faced many challenges and has lost a lot but she remains firm in her convictions.