Paula Bisiau

Paula Bisiau is the Undersecretary of Sustainable and Safe Mobility in the Buenos Aires City Government. This department works on public policies regarding road safety, walkability and cycling promotion as a key urban mode of transport.

With a Human Scale city paradigm, she works to promote sustainable means of transportation adopting the vision-zero approach, which seeks to eliminate all traffic fatalities and severe injuries. To that end, she developed the first Road Safety Plan for the city, which encourages pedestrian priority, respect and coexistence in transit.

She is also in charge of the Gender and Transport agenda in the Secretariat of Transport, which aims to equalize job opportunities within the sector and improve women’s mobility conditions in relation to street harassment.

Paula began working in the public sector in 2009 as General Director of the Center for Management and Community Participation 14, in the neighborhood of Palermo. In this role, she aimed to consolidate the state presence at the local level and encourage democratic and participatory dialogue with citizens. She then served as General Director of Healthy Mobility in the Buenos Aires City Government, where she was in charge of promoting Ecobici, the first public and free-of-charge bike system in Argentina, among other policies to transform Buenos Aires into a greener, more inclusive and innovative city.

She has a Bachelor’s degree in Philosophy from the Sorbonne University in Paris, completed a Master’s degree in Urban Economics at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires in 2009, and won a scholarship to Georgetown University’s Innovation and Leadership in Government Program in 2014.

She was selected as a Fellow for the first VV Engage Cohort.