Juan Constain

Education: Masters in City Planning from MIT; BA in Urban Planning from Universidad del Rosario (Bogota, Colombia).

Recent projects include: Kilómetro Cero and BBCA

Personal interests include: Traveling, football (a.k.a soccer) fan and cooking.

Juan is an urban planner and a strategy professional with experience working in Latin America and the United States alongside partners in government, academia and community-based organizations.

He is currently an advisor for the MIT Community Innovators Lab where he worked between 2013 and 2019. As part of CoLab’s Inclusive Regional Development Program, Juan worked with partners and consultants in Latin America in the design and implementation of capacity building and leadership development programs that advance economic democracy and self-determination, with a special focus in the Colombian Pacific Region. He is also the co-founder of Quipu, an MIT-awarded startup focused on building economic justice through civic and financial technology. In the past, Juan worked for Ruta N, Medellin’s Innovation Agency in developing strategies for community engagement for the Innovation District project.

He earned his Masters Degree in City Planning from MIT in 2018, a degree in Urban Management and Development (2013) and a postgraduate degree in Urban Law (2015) from Universidad del Rosario in Bogota, Colombia.

His research and practice interests revolve around the relationship between innovation and inequality and the conditions that can support advancing economic democracy through innovation and entrepreneurship as well as supporting cross-sector transnational collaborations in the Americas.