Gloria Visconti is a Climate Change Lead Specialist at the Climate Change and Sustainability Division of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), where she coordinates the areas related to Concessional Climate Finance. Among her responsibilities, Gloria is the technical focal point of the IDB for the Green Climate Fund and the Climate Investment Funds. She was senior policy adviser at the Ministry of Environment of Italy and at the Prime Minister Office in the G8 Task Force working on climate and energy policies. Gloria was Practitioner Fellow at Harvard’s Center for International Development and Associate in the Energy Technology Innovation Project at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. She has a PhD at the University of Bologna and a Master in Public Administration at Harvard University.

Panel 2
Global Perspectives on Bridging the Gap

Radhika Radhakrishnan
PhD scholar and Research Affiliate, MIT Data+Feminism Lab

Radhika Radhakrishnan is a PhD scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in History, Anthropology, and Science, Technology, and Society (HASTS). She holds a Master's degree (M.A.) in Women’s Studies from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India, and a Bachelor's degree (B.E.) in Computer Science Engineering from M. S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India. Prior to the commencement of her PhD, for four years, she has studied the intersection of gender justice and digital technologies using feminist, qualitative methodologies. Her research has focused on understanding the challenges faced by gender-minoritized communities with digital technologies in India through their lived experiences, and finding entry points to intervene meaningfully, such as by influencing policy change. Her research has spanned the domains of Artificial Intelligence, data governance (pertaining to surveillance technologies and health data), and feminist Internets. She has previously carried out research with the World Wide Web Foundation, Internet Democracy Project, and the Centre for Internet and Society. She has also consulted with the Internet Governance Forum of the United Nations and the Women's Rights Programme of the Association for Progressive Communications.

Panel 2
Global Perspectives on Bridging the Gap

Aklilu Fikresilassie
Director, Thriving Resilient Cities,
WRI Africa Data

Aklilu Fikresilassie is the Director of Thriving Resilient Cities at WRI Africa and Representative of WRI in Ethiopia. He has more than 16 years of professional leadership and technical experiences in the field of Urban Development and Management as well as managing non-governmental programmes. Prior to joining WRI, Aklilu spent 7 years at United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat) as a Programme Manager, representing the agency in Ethiopia. while working with the UN-Habitat, Aklilu has successfully represented the agency in the United Nations Country Team and played a key role in position the urban agenda in the UN joint programmes and supported the Ethiopian Government’s endeavor towards Sustainable urbanization. He also worked with UNDP in South Sudan as Planning Specialist and team leader. Further, Aklilu led the bureau of Finance and Economic Development where he managed the government and NGOs, bilateral and multilateral programmes. Aklilu is a qualified Urban and Development planning, monitoring and evaluation specialist with a Master of Arts degree in Urban Management and Development (specialization: Urban and Regional development strategies) from Erasmus University, the Netherlands (2006).

Panel 2
Global Perspectives on Bridging the Gap

Research Scholar
MIT Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism

Claudia Dobles Camargo is an experienced architect, urbanist, and presidential advisor with over 15 years of expertise in urban mobility, social housing, community engagement, climate change, and fair transition. She served as the first lady of Costa Rica from 2018 to 2022, co-leading the Costa Rican National Decarbonization Plan alongside the president, where she led high-impact resilience and adaptation projects in Costa Rica such as the 82km “Electric Passenger Train” with support from CABEI and the Green Climate Fund as well as the “Water Supply Project for the Tempisque Basin” the most important adaptation project in Costa Rica.Claudia's achievements include advocating for expanding the roles of the first lady or first gentleman in Costa Rica and promoting gender equality and women's empowerment. Before her role as First Lady, she worked as a regional design leader for a multinational firm, contributing to large-scale projects across Latin America & the Caribbean, and the United States. Claudia holds a degree in Architecture from the University of Costa Rica and has engaged in sustainability programs at Kanto Gakuin University in Japan. She is a 23’ Loeb Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design and currently focuses on research at the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism on the intersection of climate change and AI.

Panel 2
Moderator
Global Perspectives on Bridging the Gap