Karla is a Senior Associate at Cityfi, based in New York City. At Cityfi, she helps lead strategic planning and organizational assessment efforts with a focus on aligning vision, outcomes, and performance measures. Her work includes designing outcome-oriented action agendas, developing performance frameworks, and facilitating participatory workshops that elevate stakeholder perspectives and build consensus across diverse stakeholders.

With a background in architecture and urban planning, Karla specializes in supporting public and private institutions to define their mission, build strategies to achieve it, and establish actionable steps for delivery. She places particular emphasis on understanding how organizations function internally, evaluating whether the right structures and processes are in place to achieve long-term goals and impact. Her approach bridges organizational design with policy, planning, and implementation.

Prior to joining Cityfi, Karla worked with UN-Habitat as an urban planning consultant, contributing to the development of city strategies with a planning horizon to 2030 aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. She designed and implemented participatory methodologies that incorporated community input into global strategies and local tactical urbanism interventions.

She also served as Project Manager in City & Territory Planning at IDOM, where she led studies on climate change, natural risks, and urban growth for the Inter-American Development Bank’s Emerging and Sustainable Cities Program in Hermosillo, Mexico. She also contributed to Mexico’s Special Economic Zones pre-feasibility study with the National Bank for Public Works and Services. Earlier in her career, Karla worked with the Municipality of Milan in the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning, supporting tactical urbanism initiatives.