De Nosotros, Con Amor

for women’s
suffrage in
Puerto Rico
and member
of the Liberal
Party, she was
the fifth woman
on the island to
register to vote
and became the
Liberal Party’s
representative
for the
registration of
women. After the defeat of the Liberal
Party in 1936, Doña Fela aided Luis
Muñoz Marín (future governor of Puerto
Rico from 1949-1965) in establishing
the Popular Democratic Party (PPD)
in 1938. In 1940, she was designated
the President of the PPD’s San Juan
Committee and accepted the position as
mayor of San Juan in 1946 after Mayor
Roberto Sánchez Vilella resigned. As
mayor, Doña Fela distributed resources
to poor children, offered legal aid to
low-income residents, and built centers
for the elderly. The San Juan Municipal
Hospital, under her careful renovation,
was the first on the island to receive
full accreditation from the American
Hospital Association, and also laid the
foundations for the founding of the
School of Medicine in 1950. In 1949, she
established “Maternal Schools,” centers
meant for childcare that allowed women
to find careers outside of the household
and that also served as a model for
the federal Head Start program in the
United States. After leaving office, she
remained active in politics by partaking
The Costa Rica Star.
in committees that focused on urban
issues and was the Goodwill Ambassador
to countries across the world.
Karen Christiana Figueres Olsen
For almost all of her life, Figueres has
been involved in activism pertaining
to climate change, sustainable
development and energy, and land
use. Globally recognized as a leader on
climate change, Figueres was elected
Executive Secretary of the United
Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change (UNFCCC) from 2010
to 2016. For those six years, she worked
to reassemble the global climate change
negotiating process which led to the
2015 Paris Agreement (a plan in which
each country must deduce, plan and
continuously report on its contributions
towards reducing global warming). She is
the co-founder of Global Optimism, has
served as chair of the Advisory Board
of The Lancet Countdown: Tracking
Progress on Health and Climate Change,
and is the co-author of the book “The
Future We Choose: Surviving the Climate
Crisis.”
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