Giovana Beltrao

Giovana has been involved in international spatial - urban and regional planning / housing / shelter and development work since 1992 specializing in sustainable and resilient urban planning (master planning; integrated planning; spatial planning; land use planning and governance), social development (gender-based approach/mainstreaming), affordable housing/shelter, low-income community-driven development, and slum upgrading. Giovana has had the opportunity to live and work in about 30 developing countries in Asia-Pacific, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, and the Middle East in addition to planning work in Canada. Her clients have included the Asian Development Bank (ADB), Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), CIDA, UN agencies (e.g. UNDP, UNICEF, UN-Habitat, UN-Women, UNHCR, etc.), World Bank (WB), national and local governments, the private sector, and international NGOs. Through them Gio has participated in a wide variety of multi-disciplinary development projects, including team leading multi-sector national and international teams, in various cross-cultural and fragility situations with an emphasis on preparing strategic development programmes and projects emphasizing inclusiveness, poverty reduction and resilience. Gio is familiar with safeguard policies and internationally recognized best practices. Gio’s work also integrates climate change adaptation, mitigation and disaster risk management as fundamental to inclusive, safe, resilient, sustainable and friendly human settlements. Gio has Brazilian and Canadian citizenships and speaks English, Portuguese, and Spanish. Gio is a dynamic, problem-solving, communicative, and team-player professional with particular strengths in designing, implementing, and monitoring programs and projects integrating social-gender, economic, environmental, institutional, and physical aspects (land, shelter and infrastructure). Gio is aware of the need to ensure that programmes and projects are implementable, affordable, and based on the full range of stakeholders’ agendas while promoting strong cross sectoral synergies with other sectors and gender equality/protection.