I am a professional and researcher in the built environment, with 20+ years of combined experience in both industry and academia. 

In the industry I have worked as a Construction Project Manager, dealing with a multidisciplinary set of customers and delivering multiple projects in challenging settings such as prisons, hospitals, and educational buildings. After graduating in 1993 I worked as a Construction Manager in several projects including hospital and educational settings. From 1998 to 2011, I worked at the Bio-Bio Regional Directorate of the Chilean Prison Service ‘Gendarmería de Chile’, heading the architecture and construction regional office, delivering capital refurbishments and working on the upgrade of the 24 prison and probation facilities across 13 cities in the Bio-Bio region. In 2011 I was appointed to work as senior project manager, heading the PMO of the regional directorate. In January 2014 I moved to the UK to start my PhD studies.

In academia, I am a Lecturer in Construction Management at the partnership programme between Bath Spa University and GBS in Manchester, UK. Since 2006 until I left Chile in 2014, I worked as associate Lecturer in Construction Management at the School of Construction Engineering of the Universidad del Bio-Bio, Chile. Internationally, I have been part of the team of visitant Lecturers for the postgraduate diploma offered online in Latin America by Innova Publica, lecturing students on the relevance of addressing the physical and mental responses of people to the built environment during the definition phase of the projects, to better identify deliverables and success criteria.

I was awarded a PhD in Architecture from the University of Sheffield in the UK after conducting cross-continental research that investigated how the built environment can affect the health and well-being of people in prison, and how this issue is addressed by designers and key decisionmakers in the design of prison facilities across Europe, North America and South America. It also explored the view of international advisers from the World Health Organisation and different United Nations offices. My study proposes a new framework for health and well-being considerations in prison design.

In December 2021 I was appointed as PI in a EU funded research on the physical conditions of imprisonment in both Honduras and Bolivia.