Dr. Bengoa is an Associate Professor of International Economics at the Colin Powell School at City University of New York (CUNY-CCNY). She is the former Chair of the Department of Economics and Business and the former Director of the M.A program in Economics, position that she hold for six years at the Colin Powell School. She also serves as a senior fellow at the Open Political Economy Network in London and as an external research fellow at the Institute of International Economics in the University Jaume I and University of Valencia in Spain and at the University of Johannesburg. She has been visiting scholar and visiting professor at the Department of Economics at Columbia University, University of California at Berkeley, the University of The Republic in Uruguay, University of Costa Rica, the University Federico Santa María (Chile) and Universidad of Azuay (Ecuador). She has also collaborated with the World Bank and United Nations on projects about economic growth in Latin America and has conducted fieldwork for the AECI (Spanish International Cooperation Agency).

Dr. Bengoa is an economist with wide-ranging research interests that span migration, trade, productivity growth and its link to R&D, foreign direct investment determinants, the computation of home bias in trade and its impact on foreign direct investment patterns. She has been quoted in media outlets as the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Politico, BBC. Dr. Bengoa has published widely on the interaction between openness and growth, productivity and development. She is currently focusing on the impact of bilateral investment agreements on Latin American foreign direct investment (FDI), and the trade diversion effects of non-tariff measures for Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) countries and drivers of firm innovation and their effect on productivity growth. In parallel, she is studying the effects of hukou policy on the health outcomes of rural-to-urban migrants in China.

Dr. Bengoa is from Spain and lives in New York. She tutors, pro bono, immigrants who lack the resources to go to school in math and economics. She is a mentor to many women on a diverse array of issues. She is also a yogi and art lover who supports young local artists.