Three Working Group sessions, each divided into six sectors (Housing; Energy; Economic Development; Physical Infrastructure; Natural Infrastructure; and Health, Education and Social Services), were held in February 13-15 , March 13-15, and April 10-12, 2018. Each sector’s Working Group consisted of approximately 20 participants, including civil society leaders, Puerto Rican experts, and representatives from relevant organizations. The Working Groups facilitated a technical discussion, which, in turn, led to the identification of needs, goals, and actions that contribute to the resilient recovery and reconstruction of the sector. Throughout the three sessions, needs and opportunities were identified, refined and, finally, prioritized based on interdependencies and resilience qualities.

Mike Soto founded the Center for a New Economy (CNE) in 1998, and since then, has steered CNE into becoming one of the most credible and influential voices in Puerto Rico. Since 2014, CNE has been recognized as one of the Top Think-Tanks to Watch by the Global Think Tank Report of the University of Pennsylvania.

Mike has served as member of the Community Innovator’s Lab at MIT in Boston, Massachusetts, and the YouthSave Advisory Board at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C. In 2008, he was selected as an Aspen Institute Ideas Fellow.

Mike was an editor of The Economy of Puerto Rico: Restoring Growth, published by the Brookings Institution in 2006 and selected, that same year, as a Notable Book by the American Library Association. He has been a columnist for El Nuevo Día, Puerto Rico’s largest daily circulation, since 2003, and was the host of a weekly news radio program on economics for several years.

He is currently the Yale Alumni Schools Director for Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Baldwin School of Puerto Rico, an Emeritus Member of the Advisory Council for the Conservation Trust of Puerto Rico, and the Chairman of Espacios Abiertos, an organization dedicated to growing civic capacity and promoting transparency in Puerto Rico.

Mike has a B.A. from Yale University and a Juris Doctor from Vanderbilt University.

Richard L. Carrión is the Executive Chairman of the Board of Directors of Popular, Inc., a publicly traded (BPOP) financial holding company. Banco Popular, a wholly owned subsidiary of Popular, Inc., is Puerto Rico’s leading depository institution.  Mr. Carrión served as Popular’s Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board from 1991 to 2017.

After obtaining a Bachelor’s Degree from the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania and receiving a Master’s Degree in Information Services from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Mr. Carrión joined Banco Popular in 1976.

In the information technology arena, Mr. Carrión’s vision brought the first network of ATMs to Puerto Rico and many other Latin American countries, and also spearheaded the successful migration from paper to electronic transactions.

Mr. Carrión sits on the Board of Directors of Verizon Communications since 1995, where he is a member of the Human Resources and Corporate Governance and Policy Committees, and is Chairman of the Finance Committee.  He also served as class A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York from 2008 through 2015.

Mr. Carrión’s enthusiasm and energy in professional matters is coupled with a deep sense of social justice. He has been a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) since 1990, where he chaired the Finance Commission and the Audit Committee from 2002 until 2013. He was a member of the IOC Executive Board from 2004 until 2012.

He is a founding member and trustee of the Banco Popular Foundation.

Carmen Milagros Concepción is professor and director of the Graduate School of Planning at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus.  She completed a Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning and a post-doctorate in Environmental Policy at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds a Master in Planning and a B.S. in Physics from the University of Puerto Rico.

Her research has focused on environmental policy and regulation, socio-environmental movements and organizations, institutions, and governance, topics on which she has published in academic and professional journals in Puerto Rico and abroad. She recently co-edited (with Gustavo García-López and Alejandro Torres-Abreu) the book manuscript entitled Environment and Democracy: Experiences of Community-Based Environmental Management in Puerto Rico, which has been accepted for publication by the University of Puerto Rico Press.

Dr. Concepción was director of the Social Sciences Research Center of the University of Puerto Rico from 2006 until 2009. Before becoming a faculty member of the Graduate School of Planning, she taught at San Diego State University and at the New School for Social Research.

Dr. Concepción also has a professional trajectory in public service.  Before beginning her doctoral studies, she held positions as a planner, researcher, and consultant in various agencies and entities of the Government of Puerto Rico, including the Municipality of San Juan, the Puerto Rico Planning Board, the Puerto Rico Energy Office, the Right to Employment Administration, the Commission on Educational Reform, and the House of Representatives.  She also worked for the Planning Office of the Puerto Rico Legal Services Corporation.

Mr. Stubbe is a Chairman of the Prisa Group of Companies, developers of Green Resort Residential Communities and hotels in Puerto Rico. An award-winning developer of planned communities, he is an understated yet confident visionary. Stubbe is one of Puerto Rico’s largest developer-builders of residential, master-planned communities with over $100 million in annual sales and more than 800 employees.

He graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology with a Bachelor Degree in Civil Engineering and obtained a PMD (Program for Management Development) from Harvard Business School. He is an actual Governor of the Urban Land Institute and past Chairman of the Board of Directors of Península de Cantera Project (a government and private non-profit initiative to re-develop the largest remaining slum in San Juan), past President of the Puerto Rico chapter of the National Association of Homebuilders, member of the Georgia Tech College of Engineering Advisory Board, past Board Member of National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, Chairman of the Board of Herencia (a nonprofit environmental foundation), and Chairman of the Tasis Foundation (a K-12 educational institution).

Stubbe personifies the modern-day entrepreneur whose concern for the environment has turned into a mission. “As developers, we are nothing more than an instrument of the people of Puerto Rico to help create a better society.”

Dr. García Blanco directs Instituto Nueva Escuela, a training center for Montessori teachers. She is also a professor at the Department of Education of Universidad del Sagrado Corazón in Santurce.

In 2013, she was appointed by the Governor of Puerto Rico, Alejandro García Padilla, as a member of the UPR Governing Board for a term of five years. As part of the Governing Board, Dr. García Blanco is a member of the Academic, Research and Student Affairs, and Development Committees.

Dr. Ana María García Blanco holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy in Education from Harvard University, where she also completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree in Education. Her doctoral thesis was an ethnographic study of a community school in the Juan Domingo neighborhood in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico.

Dr. García Blanco worked as director of La Nueva Escuela Juan Ponce de León in Guaynabo for 21 years. Using an innovative approach and the Montessori method, she managed to reduce violence in the school and increase the academic performance of students. The school became a pilot school, the first to use the Montessori system in Puerto Rico.

She is the author of several education publications. Among them is the book Protagonistas en la comunidad, Texto Escolar para Segundo Grado de la Editorial Norma. She also collaborated in the articles “The Participation of Parents”, “The Education of the Youth”, and “The Collective Work of the Teachers” of the “Tertulias de Aquí” section of the Diálogo newspaper.