Carolina Leitao Álvarez-Salamanca
Mayor - Municipality of Peñalolén
Profession: Lawyer from University of Chile. Former Councilwoman at Municipality of Providencia. Vice-president of the Sustainable Urban Development and Climate Change area of the technical committee of Mercocities. Current Mayor at Municipality of Peñalolén and the first woman President of the Chilean Association of Municipalities.
Review: The Mayor has been linked to Peñalolén since 2004, where she participates in the communal government of her predecessor, Claudio Orrego, where she was part of his municipal team.
In 2009, she became Housing Manager of the municipality, carrying out important work in implementing the communal housing policy, managing subsidies and coordinating the construction of social housing, providing better living conditions for families in the area. In 2011, she assumed the Community and Family Management, dedicated to promote the management of neighborhood tables to listen to the concerns of neighbors and improve the quality of life and neighborhoods.
In 2012 she was elected as Mayor and re-elected in the periods of 2016 and 2021. As Mayor, she has promoted a policy of social integration, generated innovative initiatives to improve the quality of life of the residents of the commune, particularly in matters of security, environment, health, education, housing, gender, childhood, protection of the elderly, entrepreneurship and recovery of public spaces with new sports, cultural and municipal service infrastructures.
During his administration, she has promoted various projects that have highlighted Peñalolén as a benchmark community in environmental matters, achieving important awards such as Avonni in 2021, where it seeks to make visible the success stories that are creating value through innovation in different categories and categories; the national award of Environment in 2016, in the category Promotion of Sustainable Culture by the project "Ecopark" as the first Center for Applied Environmental Education and Research in Chile, on issues of urban circular economy; and the 2021-2022, National Cities Challenge Award from the WWF conservation organization, one of the greatest climate challenges at a global level and that in this edition had the participation of 280 cities from more than 50 countries around the world.
In her political career, she has stood out for being one of the influential mayors in the Metropolitan Region, being nominated in 2017 as one of the 100 leading women in Chile.
