Keynote Lecture: Soledad Nuñez Mendez

Soledad Nuñez Mendez is a Former Minister of Housing, Paraguay and an MPP student at the University of Oxford. She was the Keynote Speaker, lecturing on the subject of challenges in human welfare and what the solutions should look like.

Lecture report

By Anna Vasylyeva, co-chair, Human Welfare Conference 2019

In her deeply inspiring lecture, Soledad shared her journey of becoming the youngest Cabinet Office holder in Paraguay and serving her country in the position of a Minister of Housing and Habitat. Being a very humble person, she discussed not only her achievements but also challenges along the way, such as the problem of building a team from scratch, combating corruption, and being a political outsider. The Q&A session led to an insightful discussion on how to make change as a young person and a woman in a traditional environment.

Soledad’s recipe for building successful reforms in resource-constrained settings can be summarized as people + transparency + careful choice of your battles. On the point of transparency, it was particularly interesting to learn that during her time in office she had a public social media account and made sure to personally respond to all of the citizens’ queries. Among other points, Soledad emphasized the power of quick wins in the context of where people are longing for reforms. She also highlighted the need to stay connected with the population by going on the ground to understand the real effects your policies have on the communities you serve.

Video of the lecture

The 2019 Keynote Lecture was livestreamed by Human Welfare Conference 2019 sponsor Gapeli: watch the 2019 Keynote Lecture here.

Pictures from the lecture