Adriana Rojas

Member of Harvard's Graduate School of Design Alumni Council and Co-Chair of Design Impact Series and former President Harvard Club of Mexico. Envision Sustainability Professional, Project Designer and Project Architect for sustainable beach house, Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca and for a refurbishment of a 1920´s house/art gallery in Condesa, Mexico City. Former Governance and Finance for Metropolitan Development consultant, for the Metropolitan Area Program for the Valley of Toluca, State of Mexico. She contributed to the new governing alignment for the Mexican Association of Urban Planners (AMU) and is the former Vice President of Legislation and Governance. Adriana Rojas, former Director of Technical Assistance to local governments at BANOBRAS and previously head of Habitat Program at SEDATU, joined AMU to focus on legislative and governance issues facing local governments in Mexico. She contributed to an agenda based on proposals for legislative improvements and enabling necessary governance environments to aid public officials in addressing urban development, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and social and financial sustainability. As the former Head of Habitat, Ms. Rojas managed federal government subsidies directed towards introduction of basic urban infrastructure accompanied by social and capacity building actions, urban design guidelines such as a complete-street vision for these urban interventions, and awareness actions related to preserving natural resources and mitigation of climate change effects. In that role, she focused on re centering urban policy at the local level and recognising territories´ invaluable assets as a means to improving quality of life on the public realm, where urban poverty most affected inhabitants of 350 cities´ peripheries. In her time at UNAM, FES Acatlan´s Center for Municipal and Metropolitan Studies, she focused on identifying three viable metropolitan-scale projects which could be a turning point, from both a governance and financial feasibility standpoint, for the creation of Toluca´s Metro Area (15 municipalities and Toluca, capital of the State). As former Director of Technical Assistance in Mexico's Development Bank, she focused on identifying local governments´ main concerns regarding financial challenges for improvements on infrastructure and livability. She also had the opportunity to head IDB´s Sustainable Cities Program and then focus on sustainability criteria to identify infrastructure projects which could comply with international climate or green financing. She is a certified Envision Sustainability Professional by ISI and Harvard´s Zofnass Program. She continues her proximity to architecture as an active member of Harvard's Graduate School of Design Alumni Council. She is the Co-Chair of the Design Impact Series- opportunity to challenge and unite design-focused change makers from around the world who are dedicated to bringing forward a more resilient, healthy, and equitable world. We need to make way for new opportunities and approach regions through innovative, community-based strategies, and cultural and environmental adaptation. She recently organized a global 24-hour event “Following the Sun” where she curated Latin America´s “Global Gardens'' Session showcasing existing efforts on making change happen using Design as a tool for actionable, transformative change, and healing. As of now Ms. Rojas has focused her attention on sustainable infrastructure, re-connecting people to nature via the interstices between urban and landscape-natural resources, and the ability to strategize, plan, design and implement measures towards food and water security while contributing to bolstering the productivity of regional landscapes, re-thinking and shaping thriving local communities, and positively impacting cities as incubators for social mobility, equity, and justice. Currently she is the Project Designer and Project Architect for a sustainable beach house in Puerto Escondido, Oaxaca and for a renovation and refurbishment of a 1920´s house/art gallery in Condesa, Mexico City. She is the former Project Manager for the St Regis Hotel Renovation, Mexico City. She holds a Bachelor's Degree in Architecture from Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City and a Master of Architecture in Urban Design from the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.