Informal Cities Workshop Kickoff Lecture: Mabe Garcia Rincon

Maria Beatriz (Mabe) Garcia Rincon is the Executive Director of Dis_Local Lab, an international development firm that offers development solutions via architecture, design, landscape architecture and environmental sciences as well as policy initiatives. She is also a climate finance consultant at the World Bank where she advises senior leadership under the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), Washington D.C. She advises senior leadership on international financial strategies to protect foreign direct investments against political and non-commercial risks in developing countries as well as on Fragile, under Conflict and Violent (FCV)countries.

Garcia Rincon returned to private sector and non-profit management strategy to offer architecture a pathway through which to integrate its scenario building visual analyses as a way to enhance informal spaces with innovative ways to integrate into the sustainable growth of cities. A career international development professional, she led Urban-Elements Foundation, an NGO with eight other Harvard graduates at the Graduate School of Design (GSD) between 2014 to July 2017, where she advanced design-finance thinking to innovate modes of financial fundraising for informal strategic development for net-zero modalities. Previous assignments include Harvard University Fellow at Zofnass for Sustainable Infrastructure and the Exuma Lab. Garcia Rincon also served at the Environment Department Front Office to the World Bank for the Climate Investment Fund, strategy, and behavior change from 2008-2010. She is a graduate in Urban and International Development Master of Science from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and a Master of Science in Urban and Regional Policy at Northeastern University. Thereafter, she project managed at Harvard University at the Boston Federal Bank Affordable Housing Competition where she led a team that won second place and also worked at the Sustainability Fellowship in Boston.

Prior to joining the World Bank, Garcia-Rincon worked in the private sector as procurement specialist in McLean, VA, and led teams in London, UK, Caracas, Venezuela and San Jose, Costa Rica.