Our Story

Over a year after Hurricanes Irma and María made landfall in the Caribbean and caused catastrophic damage to Puerto Rico, the island was still reeling. Thousands remained without basic necessities, hundreds did not have power, roofless homes covered in blue tarps were collapsing, and roads remained inaccessible. Yet, while the island struggled to recover, it needed to find a way to brace itself for future extreme weather events. It needed to rebuild for resilience.

When University of Puerto Rico alumna Yanel de Ángel, an architect at Perkins&Will, visited the island to participate in volunteer recovery efforts, she saw firsthand the challenges plaguing the communities there. She realized that full disaster relief and resilience planning would require the collective contributions of many. So, she spearheaded a campaign to attract partners in academia, private industry, and the nonprofit and civic realms to come together and devise implementable recovery and resilience strategies—everything from risk analyses and planning to architecture and design.

The campaign started with a planned symposium—a forum for an exchange of ideas and solutions with key stakeholders. But the campaign quickly evolved into something much bigger: a long-term commitment by a robust (and growing!) alliance of local and global organizations to provide disaster relief and protection to Puerto Rico through resilience planning and design. The goal: to build a resilient Puerto Rico.

Today, the alliance is steered by Yanel de Ángel, Principal at Perkins&Will and it has grown beyond Puerto Rico to include Monterrey-Mexico, Atlanta-Georgia, and Boston-Massachusetts.