Macario Giraldo came to the United States of America in 1961 with a Fulbright scholarship to study linguistics at Georgetown University. After his MS in Applied Linguistics, he went to the Catholic University of America for his Ph.D. in clinical psychology. He has been faculty at the Washington School of Psychiatry since 1974. He has written textbooks for the teaching of English in Columbia, as well as a number of papers and articles for academic books and journals.