Alumni

Diego Flores
MPA '12

Diego is a forestry engineer dedicated to the protection of Chilean nature and biodiversity by working in the design and implementation of programs and public policies for the protection of both terrestrial and coastal-marine environments. Diego has been an employee of the Ministry of the Environment in Chile since 1999. From that year to 2004, Diego led the “Chilean Trail project”, guiding both national and regional processes to establish a national trail that traverses through the main natural ecosystems of the country as a way to sensibilize citizens regarding to the relevance of the nature heritage. After that, between 2005 and 2010 Diego participated in the creation and management of the national portfolio of sites for biodiversity conservation, and several studies related with Chilean terrestrial ecosystems, management plans, etc. In addition, Diego supported the design and implementation of the Protected Areas National Policy and its Action Plan. In 2009, Diego got the Presidente de la República scholarship to get his first Master in Wild Areas and Nature Conservation in the University of Chile. Two years later, and motivated by his desire to enhance his knowledge of and skills in public policy, and as a part of an institutional capacity building project from the Ministry of the Environment, in May 2011 Diego got the Luksic Fellowship that allowed him to join Columbia University in New York City to pursue a Master of Public Administration (MPA) in Environmental Science and Policy in 2012. Coming back to Chile, since June 2012, Diego is leading the Protected Areas Section by conducting the updating and implementation of Protected Areas National Action Plan according the Program of Work of Protected Areas (PoWPA) of the UN Convention for Biological Diversity (CBD) and coordinating several works related with the creation and management of terrestrial and marine protected areas. Throughout his work, Diego has participated in different congress, meetings and seminars about protected areas and protected areas systems in Latin America, Canada and United States of America.

Jenny Mager Santos
MPA '12

Since she was very young, she has felt attracted to the earth sciences. Her undergraduate was Geographical Civil Engineering in the University of Santiago of Chile where she ranked first in her class. In 2007 she started to work for the Government of Chile in the National Commission for the Environment as a specialist in atmospheric pollution and dispersion models, in those years, she was in charge of the coordination of different tasks related to decontamination plans in Valparaíso and Santiago. In 2010, she jointed to the team of the Climate Change Office of the Ministry of Environment, where she took the coordination of the National Authority for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) under the Kyoto Protocol. In 2011, she was awarded with the Luksic Fellowship for Chilean Student to participate in the Master and Public Administration in Environmental Science and Policy Program in Columbia University in the City of New York receiving the support of the Ministry.  After the graduation, she returned to the Climate Change Office and now she is working in the mitigation of greenhouse gases in Chile and also is one of the expert reviewers of emission inventories certified by the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).