Mr. Esteban Leon is a Bolivian national, with over 20 years of international professional experience in managing sustainable urban development in UN-Habitat. His main areas of expertise include economics, finance, housing and settlements, urban and climate resilience, programme management, construction and reconstruction projects, and institutional strengthening programmes for improved urban governance.
Esteban has been representing UN-Habitat in the Humanitarian Inter-Agency Standing Committee IASC in Geneva (2005-2013), Chair of the IASC Meeting Humanitarian Challenges in Urban Areas Group (2010-13), Chair of the Urban Resilience Medellin Collaboration as well as Chair of the Making Cities Resilient Campaign Steering Committee (2017-2020). Currently UN-Habitat global focal point for the UN-Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR). He has developed, fundraised, initiated, managed and backstopped projects on human settlements recovery in Angola, Mozambique, Pakistan, Peru, Colombia, Georgia, Gaza, Haiti, El Salvador, Samoa, Syria, Philippines, and Ecuador. He was the Global Programme manager of “Making cities sustainable and resilient: Implementing the Sendai Framework for DRR 2015-2030 at the local level”, a joint programme between EC DG DEVCO, UN-DRR and UN-Habitat. Manager and coordinator of the CRGP implementation in Asuncion, (Paraguay), Barcelona (Spain), Dakar (Senegal), Maputo (Mozambique), Port Vila (Vanuatu), Teresina (Brazil) and Yakutsk (Russia).
Before UN-Habitat, Esteban has been working in the banking, microcredit, and microfinance sector in Argentina and Bolivia, NGO sector in Bolivia and Kenya. Since then, he has been recruited by UN-Habitat and based in Nairobi, Geneva, Panama, and Barcelona.