Hector was born and raised in Medellín, Colombia where he worked as a therapist and as a theater actor-director until he was forced into exile due to persecution for his human rights activism. In the US, he worked as a therapist and developed original plays with immigrants, torture survivors, incarcerated youth, gang members, AIDS/HIV infected people and people in Hospice care.

In the year 2000, he founded ImaginAction to help people tap the transformative power of theater in programs throughout the US, Latin America, Europe, Africa, The Middle East and many Asian countries. He has worked mostly in war-torn and post conflict zones training psicosocial teams and using theater as a laboratory to explore alternatives to conflict and as a path to design healing rituals.

In 2017, he decided to return to his native country to work in the reconciliation process inspired by the peace agreement between the FARC guerrilla and the Colombian government. With the project Reconectando, www.reconectando.org he is currently accompanying the truth commission using deep ecology, theater and ritual to work with victims and ex-combatants in the complex task of clarifying the truth, creating spaces for reconciliation and imagining the conditions for the no repetition of the violence.

Hector was honored with the prestigious Otto René Castillo Award for Political Theatre and he  is co-author with Diane Lefer of The Blessing Next to the Wound: A Story of Art, Activism, and Transformation.