•Designing, formulating, planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating community-based rural & social-economic development projects in the Yucatán Peninsula (Southern México) to move smallholder farming families toward a more sustainable and prosperous future by strengthening social capital, women empowerment, and caring for the earth.•Planning and implementing accelerated, viable, and profitable intervention strategies to reach project coverage and quality goals.•Implementing value chain strategies connecting smallholder farmers with inclusive markets and other market system stakeholders.•Facilitating inter-institutional relations with community-based organizations, donors, public/private partners, and market system stakeholders to create a collective impact.•Identifying and designing new funding and partnership opportunities to strengthen the country program portfolio in alignment with Heifer´s global strategy to close the living income gap and triple the bottom line of people, planet, and profit.•Overseeing the management of the financial resources entrusted to the projects by the donors, and resource allocation, to ensure that the donors’ and Heifer’s accountability standards are met.