Carmen López Herrera

Carmen López Herrera is an Economics graduate from Extremadura University (2001-2006). In 2006 she received the Banco Santander Award for the Best Academic Record, which brought an internship in Banco Santander’s Economic Research and Public Policy Department. In 2007 she completed the Masters in Banking and Finance offered by Escuela de Finanzas Aplicadas, Afi Escuela. Carmen currently works in the Public Finance area of Afi’s Public Administrations Consultancy arm, specialising in the provision of economic and budgetary advice at all levels of government, in Spain as well as Latin America and Maghreb.

She has participated in numerous economic-budget planning projects for regional and local governments, specifically including the preparation of financial and rebalancing plans aimed at restoring public finance stability by means of budget scenario modelling and analysis of municipal activities in order to devise efficiency measures on both the revenue (collection improvements) and expenditure (cost savings, contract renegotiation, alignment of public prices with service costs, etc.) sides.

She contributed, in her capacity as public finance specialist, to the Emerging and Sustainable Cities (ESC) Programme sponsored by the Inter-American Development Bank by conducting several fiscal sustainability studies for different Latin American cities.

She has also dedicated part of her career to the functional design of tools to improve the management of tax collection and the measurement of financial health as a whole, specifically carrying out projects for the finance ministries of Algeria and Guatemala and for several financial and non-financial firms in Spain.

It is similarly worth highlighting her participation in projects financed from European funds such as the JESSICA Initiative, managed by the European Investment Bank, designed to support sustainable urban development and regeneration through financial engineering mechanisms including public-private partnerships.