Associate professor of the Academic Department of Social and Political Sciences at the Universidad del Pacífico and member of the Research Center of the same institution.  She holds a Ph.D in International Studies with specializations in comparative development and Latin American studies from the University of Miami (United States), and has been a Salzburg Seminar Fellow in Austria in the Social and Economic Determinants of  the Public´s Health.

Professor Pérez´s current research focuses on the intersection of labor and social rights with gender, ethnicity/race, social class, and migration. Of particular interest are paid domestic workers and other special labor regimes. Prior to this line of inquiry, she conducted studies on health rights for marginalized populations and on prison policies in the United States and Peru. She is widely published in refereed and indexed journals, books, working papers and other academic texts.

She has taught undergraduate courses in ​​political and social sciences and in the public administration program of the Graduate School at the Universidad del Pacífico. Professor Pérez has been the director of Apuntes, the university´s social science journal and the academic director of the Doctorate in Strategic Management of the Graduate School of the same institution.  Prior to joining the Universidad del Pacífico, Leda was Coordinator of the Strengthening the Management of Public Education (FORGE) project based at the think tank, GRADE. Likewise, she has led various consultancies on vulnerable populations in Peru with organizations such as the Open Society Foundations, the International Labor Organization, and the Department for International Development (DfID) of the United Kingdom. Before migrating from her native country to Peru, Leda was Vice President of Health Initiatives at the Collins Center for Public Policy in the state of Florida in the United States.