Joel Sanchez holds an MPA in Development Practice from Columbia University in New York and BAs in Economics and Political Science from Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). Currently, he hold the position of Mexico Green Building Lead for IFC. Previously, he worked as Green Mortgage Manager at Infonavit, one of the largest mortgage lenders in Latin America. At J-PAL, he worked on building relationships with key partners in governments, NGOs, and multilaterals to promote evidence based policy, and created documents to translate research by J-PAL affiliates into actionable policies. Joel has experience in designing, scaling-up, and improving performance of programs in the areas of performance-based energy standard in construction, housing, rule of law, and governance. He has held positions at the Secretariat of Social Development of Mexico and the Office of the President of Mexico, where he served as Deputy Director of Social Policy and Health.

Mr. Valdes is CFO and Board Member of VINTE, a publicly traded, Mexican land developer & homebuilder with a shared value business approach. Over the past twelve years, Mr. Valdés has led the Company’s efforts to build a strategic and competitive funding base focused on a long-term capital structure with financing ranging from strong global financial institutions such as the IDB, IFC, KfW and Proparco. Mr. Valdes’ previous experience includes 12 years in finance and management consulting at McKinsey & Co. and at Mercer Oliver Wyman, managing infrastructure, transportation and real estate projects. Mr. Valdes holds a B.A. in Economics from ITESM, as well as an MBA with concentration in Finance from Booth at The University of Chicago.