Event

Antonio Pavia

Deputy Director,
Central Office for Recovery,
Reconstruction and Resiliency (COR3) of Puerto Rico

Antonio R. Pavía-Vidal has over 15 years’ experience as an attorney with expertise in governmental affairs, contract development and negotiation, disaster management, legislative efforts, and authoring policy proposals. He currently serves as deputy director at Puerto Rico’s Central Office of Recovery and Reconstruction (COR3), where he is part of the island’s recovery and reconstruction team after Hurricanes Irma and María.

Before becoming the deputy director, he was COR3’s Chief Legal Counsel, where he played an important role in the drafting and implementation of all guidelines, policies and procedures for the Puerto Rico recovery office.

Pavía-Vidal holds a BA in economics from the University of Puerto Rico and a juris doctor from the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico School of Law. Before his current role, Mr. Pavía-Vidal was a consultant for V2A. He also was a Partner in a private law firm.

Throughout his career, Pavía-Vidal has proven to have solid knowledge and experience working with cross-functional teams to develop and execute complex, time- and commercial-sensitive strategies.

Pavía-Vidal is deeply dedicated to the recovery and reconstruction of the Island.

Carmen Guerrero

Director,
Caribbean Environmental Protection Division,
US Environmental Protection Agency

Carmen Guerrero Pérez is currently Director of the Caribbean Environmental Protection Division (CEPD) of the US Environmental Protection Agency, covering Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. From 2013 to 2016, she served as Secretary of the Puerto Rico Department of Natural and Environmental Resources.

For more than 17 years, she worked as environmental and conservation planner and consultant to numerous organizations and government entities in Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, among them: Puerto Rico Conservation Trust, San Juan Bay Estuary Program, El Yunque National Forest, ENLACE del Caño Martín Peña, University of Puerto Rico, Banco Popular Foundation, and The Nature Conservancy. She also founded an environmental nongovernmental organization that provided volunteer advisory services to local communities across the island.

Guerrero Pérez obtained her bachelor’s degree in environmental public policy at the University of Michigan. She has a masters’ degree in environmental planning from the Graduate School of Planning at the University of Puerto Rico and a masters’ degree in environmental management from the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University.

Orlando Cabrera-Rivera

Head of Unit, Environmental Quality

Since 2007, Orlando Cabrera-Rivera has been the manager of the CEC’s Environmental Quality Unit. He is responsible for developing and overseeing the implementation and delivery of North America-wide environmental initiatives and capacity building efforts under the CEC’s cooperative work program related to air quality, climate change, pollutant releases and transfers registers (PRTR) systems and environmental health.

Cabrera-Rivera has over thirty years of experience in the environmental management field and in the development and implementation of international, national, regional and local environmental pollution management and policy initiatives.

Mr. Cabrera has a bachelor’s of science degree in meteorology from the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a master’s of science degree in land resources management from the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at UW-Madison.

Natasha Vázquez Pérez

Director of Federal Programs,
Municipality of Cayey

Director of federal programs for the municipality of Cayey, Puerto Rico, Natasha M. Vázquez Pérez is currently in her final year of the master’s program in environmental management at the Universidad Ana G. Méndez. She is a graduate of the Universidad de Puerto Rico, where she completed a bachelor’s degree in business administration with concentrations in accounting and chemistry. In addition, she holds certifications in landfill management and operation, recycling management, quality improvement associate, Geographic Information System, disaster recovery program management and others.

For 13 years she has served as manager and coordinator of the Cayey municipal recycling program. She also heads the educational program at the agricultural school, is involved in the animal control program, administers the Cayey sanitary landfill system, and is a member of the municipal public tendering unit (junta de subasta).

As manager of the recycling program, she prepared and implemented the recycling and composting plan for Cayey, which is approved by the US EPA and certified by the Puerto Rico Solid Waste Authority. It has been rated one of the island’s best recycling programs.

At the agricultural school, Vázquez Pérez has consolidated a program of free courses for small businesspeople, farmers, and the general public on a wide variety of topics, such as worm composting and home gardens.

As administrator of the Cayey sanitary landfill system, her most outstanding contribution took place after Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017. She prepared a logistical map for the reorganization of drinking water distribution, based on which emergency generators were installed to operate the pumping systems in every neighborhood and sector of Cayey; private drinking water self-sufficiency was promoted as well, all in coordination with the Puerto Rico National Guard, the Engineer Battalion sent from North Carolina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) team, the Red Cross, and community organizations such as Water Mission. This action helped avert a larger-scale environmental and public health crisis.

Natasha Vázquez Pérez won numerous prizes and acknowledgements for her response and best management practice implementation work in the face of the extreme contingency situations created by Hurricane Maria.

Leslie Maas Cortés

Director,
Hurricane Response Hub Technical Assistance Center
for Puerto Rico (PR-HRHTAC)

Leslie Maas Cortés is the director of the Hurricane Response Hub Technical Assistance Center for Puerto Rico (PR-HRHTAC), founder and director of Proyecto Agua Limpia (PAL), and a program manager at the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust. Following Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico, Proyecto Agua Limpia was developed to bring clean, safe drinking water to Puerto Rico’s more remote communities.

Maas Cortés has worked at the Science Trust since December 2014. Previously, she had served as assistant director of the CDC-funded regional Injury Control Research Center (ICRC) at the Medical College of Wisconsin, from 1999 until 2003, where she was responsible for operations to reduce the burden of illness and death from injury-related causes. Her specific research has focused on water quality safety, injury risk to international travelers, and patient safety efforts and she has contributed to several peer-reviewed scientific publications, including the Harvard Mortality Study conducted in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria.

Her graduate work at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health was in international health and applied nutrition and involved conducting extensive anthropometric data collection and nutritional surveys, qualitative field work, and intervention development to reduce obesity and diabetes in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Juan Javier Rivera

Leader of Special Projects,
Community Foundation of Puerto Rico (Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico)

Javier Rivera Morales has served since 2017 as Leader of Special Projects (Water and Energy) at Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico (FCPR). Under his leadership, the FCPR has developed the following community development projects:

• the energization of 37 Primary Health Centers (funded under Section 330 of the Public Health Service Act) in 35 municipalities with renewable energy systems;
• the development of the first solar community (Toro Negro in Ciales) established in Puerto Rico and certified by the Puerto Rico Energy Bureau;
• the first microgrid (in Esperanza Village in Juncos) certified by the PR Energy Bureau;
• seven community aqueducts supplied by renewable energy;
• four community resilience HUBS with renewable energy;
• the first 100% solar hydroponics community project in Aibonito;
• the energization of 30 residences in the municipality of Loíza with renewable energy systems; and
• the energization project for the municipality of Culebra.

In 2017, as a response from the FCPR in the recovery phase in the wake of Hurricane Maria, Rivera Morales led the administration for storing supplies and the delivery of these to different non-profit entities around the island, including the municipality islands of Vieques and Culebra.

He has 24 years of experience in the wholesale management industry and is the founder of JR Wholesales Inc.

Rivera Morales holds a bachelor’s degree in education with minor concentration in economics and theater from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus.

Carmen Villanueva

Community Leader,
PRODEV (Puerto Rico por el Derecho a una Vivienda Digna)

Carmen Villanueva Castro holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and is a certified fraud examiner; she also possesses a master’s degree in finance from the Universidad Interamericana de Puerto Rico. She is the community leader for Hill Brothers Sur, in Río Piedras, where she now heads the organization Hill Brothers, Inc.

By age 11 she was leading groups in the local Catholic church and in the schools she attended. As president of the Community Leaders Coalition, she successfully lobbied for amendments to community protection laws, with land protection as a particular priority. For over ten years, Villanueva Castro administered the Centro de Enlace, Desarrollo e Investigación de las Comunidades Especiales (CEDICE), a group offering services to the communities. Today, she is part of Puerto Rico por el Derecho a una Vivienda Digna (Prodev), a movement lobbying for fair housing policy, and acts as community liaison to the group Firmes, Unidos y Resilientes con la Abogacía (FURIA). Throughout her career, she has worked to mobilize the 742 special or marginalized communities of Puerto Rico, with the primary objective of building awareness of the strength of community organizations and the resources they have available to support Puerto Rico’s economic development. Among her notable achievements was participation in the Community Summit held in March 2019 at the request of women community leaders; the event was attended by over community leaders from throughout Puerto Rico.

Miles G. Richardson

Director,
National Consortium for Indigenous Economic Development,
University of Victoria

Miles G. Richardson is a citizen of the Haida Nation and of Canada. He grew up among his people on Haida Gwaii, attended high school in Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and in 1979 received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Victoria. From 1984 to 1996, he served as president of the Council of Haida Nation.

Richardson was a member of the British Columbia Claims Task Force, which made recommendations to the Government of Canada, the Government of British Columbia, and the First Nations in British Columbia on how the three parties could begin negotiations to build a new relationship and what those negotiations should include.

From 1991 to 1993, Richardson was a member of the First Nations Summit Task Group, an executive body representing First Nations in British Columbia. In October 1995, Mr. Richardson was nominated by the Summit and appointed as a Commissioner to the BC Treaty Commission. He was elected to a second term in April 1997. In November 1998, he was chosen as Chief Commissioner by agreement of Canada, BC and the First Nations Summit for a three-year term and was reappointed in November 2001.

In 2007, Mr. Richardson was named an Officer of the Order of Canada. Currently, he operates his own business advisory service and is the Director of the National Consortium for Indigenous Economic Development (NCIED).

Carmen Hernández

Co-Founder and Administrative Director,
Isla Urbana

Verlon Jose

Former Vice Chairman,
Tohono O’odham Nation

Family is everything, as we are all related.

Dean Jacobs

Consultation Manager,
External Projects Program,
Walpole Island First Nation

Dean Jacobs, a former chief of the Walpole Island First Nation and the founding director of the Walpole Island Heritage Centre, has over 43 years of experience in public service and in enhancing community-based research capabilities. In 1976, Jacobs was the first Canadian First Nation individual admitted to the Smithsonian Institution’s American “Indian” Cultural Resources Training Program. He has been an expert witness in a number of hunting and fishing rights court cases. Awarded honorary doctorate degrees from Bowling Green State University (1998), University of Windsor (2006), and York University (2008), he was the recipient of the J. Norman Emerson Silver Medal (1998) from the Ontario Archaeological Society and The Commemorative Medal (1992) presented by the Governor General of Canada. He is also a recipient of two Eagle feathers from his peers.

The Walpole Island Heritage Centre he founded is recognized by scholars as one of the best First Nation community research offices in Canada and, in 1995, received the “We the Peoples: 50 Communities Award” from the Friends of the United Nations for its exemplary record in environmental research and sustainable development and has been designated by Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development as a “First Nations Effective Practices” site.

Robert E. Moyer

Director,
Submissions on Enforcement Matters and Legal Unit