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).  She has been Visiting Faculty for the Gender Studies Program at SciencesPo in Paris, France, as well as a Salzburg Seminar Fellow in Austria in the Social and Economic Determinants of the Public´s Health.

Professor Pérez´s research examines the intersection of labor and social citizenship rights with gender, ethnicity/race, social class, and migration, especially focused on women´s role in the care economy and community-based care. 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. Her forthcoming monograph, Searching for Democracy. Women, Domestic Work, and Social Reproduction in Latin America will be published in the United States by Temple University Press in June, 2026.

She has taught undergraduate courses in political and social sciences in the United States, France and Peru, 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. 

Professor Pérez 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.