Costa Rica: Claudia Dobles Camargo

Born in 1980 in Ciudad Quesada, Costa Rica, Claudia Dobles Camargo holds a diploma in architecture from the University of Costa Rica in San José, Costa Rica (2011). As a student, she studied abroad and participated in the sustainability program at Kanto Gakuin University in Yokohama, Japan. She later worked as a regional design leader for a multinational firm, participating in large-scale designs throughout Latin America, the Caribbean, and the U.S. Dobles Camargo served as First Lady of Costa Rica from 2018 to 2022. In this role, she was a presidential advisor and the Mobility, Infrastructure, and Housing Sector Coordinator, co-leading the Costa Rica National Decarbonization Plan with the President (2018–2022). During her tenure as First Lady, the Republic of Costa Rica earned the Earthshot Prize in the “Protect and Restore Nature” category for the country’s Payment for Environmental Services (PSA) model (2021). Dobles Camargo was later awarded a Loeb Fellowship for architecture and planning from the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in Cambridge, Massachusetts (2023), and became a research scholar at the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism in Cambridge, Massachusetts (2023–).