Our Executive Director: Andrea San Gil-León

Andrea San Gil León is the executive director of the Global Network for Popular Transportation and is responsible for defining GNPT’s strategy and planning and managing, and implementing the network’s critical projects.

Andrea was one of the original movers of the Global Partnership for Informal Transportation, the precursor of GNPT. She was named one of Costa Rica's 40 Top Leaders Under 40 by the El Financiero Newspaper in 2011, a World Economic Forum Global Shaper in 2012, one of LATAM's Important Female Figures in Transport by the Inter-American Development Bank in 2021, and one of the Remarkable Feminist Voices in Transportation in 2023 by Women Mobilize Women and the Transformative Urban Mobility Initiative.

Andrea led the development of Costa Rica's Carbon Neutrality Program for the Corporate Sector. The project used technical standards to orient sustainability and climate policy in the country. She then founded and chaired Centro para la Sostenibilidad Urbana (the Center for Urban Sustainability), a non-governmental organization working to accelerate a transition towards more sustainable, inclusive, and resilient cities in the Global South.

Andrea served as a presidential advisor to the Costa Rican government, working with the country's first lady to transform and decarbonize transport and urban development in partnership with local governments and ministries. She was also an advisor to the Ministry of the Environment, supporting the Climate Change Office by coordinating the implementation of climate-related policy across 10 different national agencies.

Andrea has also worked on international projects as a consultant to global organizations such as C40 Cities, ICLEI, The Nature Conservancy, the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), Agence Française de Développement (AFD), the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP), Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), and Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB).

More recently, she authored the chapter on informal transportation in the 2023 Transportation Climate Change Global Status Report, led the development of the Enciclopedia del Transporte Informal en América Central, and co-authored a report on three-wheelers for CAF-Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean.