Informal Cities Workshop Kickoff Lecture: María M. Jaramillo Garcés
Maria M. Jaramillo, former Secretary of Planning for Bogotá, Colombia and founder of LACPlan, will deliver the Informal Cities Kickoff Lecture, “Contested Ground: Designing at the Epistemic Edge of Bogotá.”
About the Speaker
Maria M. Jaramillo is a strategic leader in sustainable urban and regional development with over 20 years of experience across Latin America and Europe. As CEO of RenoBO — Bogotá’s public land bank — she oversaw urban renewal and land readjustment in the heart of the capital. As Secretary of Planning for Bogotá (2021–2023), she directed Bogotá Reverdece 2022-2035 Land Use Plan, co-designed and institutionalized Bogotá’s Care System and Monetary Transfer System, serving 3.5 million people and keeping 500,000 out of poverty during COVID-19 pandemic.
A Harvard Mason Fellow (MPA, 2025) and Loeb Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (2023-24), she founded LACPlan to build the governance, planning, and leadership frameworks Latin America and the Caribbean need to address their most urgent transnational challenges — climate, migration, peace, and security — at the continental scale they demand.