 She was the youngest daughter of the Panamanian Consulting Engineer Carlos A. Guardia, co-founder of AIDIS, (Inter-American Association of Sanitary and Environmental Engineering), and descendant of Sebastian de la Guardia (c. 1640), one of Panamanian Founding Fathers.Her mother, Olga Zeledon, a native of Nicaragua, was the youngest daughter of the country's national hero, Benjamin Zeledón and his wife Ester Ramirez Jerez.In 1958, Guardia graduated from Roycemorel-School, an independent, nonsectarian college preparatory school located in Evanston, Illinois.