Changing a 522-year tradition, Rosa Carolina Mejía became the first female Mayor of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, a municipality in the National District of the Dominican Republic, in 2020. From this position, she has undertaken significant initiatives to enhance the city’s resilience. These initiatives include improving the network of micro parks, cleaning up streams that flow into bordering rivers, enhancing rainwater absorption systems in low-lying areas, assisting the Central Government in refurbishing the western bank of the Ozama River, and constructing Santo Domingo’s first Climate Action Plan (PAC). Her national and regional leadership earned her, since 2021, the position of Regional Vice President of the Union of Ibero-American Capital Cities (UCCI) for Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean. In this role, she promotes, through proposals and training initiatives, the growth of the orange economy, investment in pedestrian mobility, and sustainable solutions to informal trade in the Region.
Mejía was born on March 28, 1969, in Santiago de los Caballeros, Dominican Republic. After graduating as a Bachelor of Science and Letters from Santo Domingo College in 1986, she traveled to Montreal, where she attended O’Sullivan College and Concordia University for undergraduate courses. Between 1987 and 1991, she studied and completed a Bachelor’s degree in Economics at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra in the Dominican Republic. Later, she studied Marketing Management at Barna Business School.
During the 2000-2004 presidential term, she held various roles, notably Coordinator of the Advisory Council to the President of the Dominican Republic, Ambassador Attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Head of Trade Agreements, member of the coordinating team for the Free Trade Agreement with the United States (DR-CAFTA), and alternate member of the Monetary Board of the Central Bank of the Dominican Republic.
Currently, Mayor Mejía is one of the main figures of the Modern Revolutionary Party (PRM), the current ruling party, where she serves as Secretary General. In the 2016 presidential elections, she was a Vice Presidential candidate for the Modern Revolutionary Party, accompanying the now President Luis Abinader.
