Cheryl Guerrero studied anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, graduating in 2002. She first traveled to Guatemala on a UC President's Undergraduate Fellowship, doing research on Maya women in the highlands. She worked at the Hearst Museum, first as an intern, then as a supervisor on a project involving the museum's extensive collections of Native American basketry and world textiles. She also worked as a museum preparatory at the San Francisco International Airport Museum. She is now a museum technician at the Governor’s Mansion with the State of California Department of Parks & Recreation.

She joined Endangered Threads as an intern in 2004, returning to Guatemala in 2005 and 2006 to work on documentaries. She is now editing Art, Strength and the Maya Huipil, which she also wrote.