Meet Elena de la Peña

MSC Civil Engineer (2000, Madrid Technical University)
PhD Civil Engineer (2015, Madrid Technical University) Road Safety Auditor (2005, Barcelona Technical University), (2023, Instituto Mexicano del Transporte, CIFAL) Diploma ISO 39001 (2013, AENOR)

Elena is a senior civil engineer specialising in road transport, a field where she has been working in the national and international context for the last 23 years. She is currently the Deputy Director for Technical Affairs of the Spanish Road Association, an organisation where she started her professional career. She also holds a PhD in transportation from Madrid Polytechnic University, specialising in road safety.

Although her main field of work has been road safety, she also has a significant background in road maintenance, performance indicators, integration of roads in the environment, financing, new technologies, etc.

She has developed consultancy services for private companies, such as Philips, 3M, Mapfre and others. But most of her professional activity has been linked to the development of assessments for Public Administrations; in this context, she has intensively worked in the development of Road Safety Strategies in the Spanish Regional Governments of Galicia, Aragon, Orense, Castilla y León, Castilla La Mancha ad La Palma island. Her international experience in Road Safety Strategies has been a reference in the development of the National Road Safety Strategy 2013-2018 in Nicaragua, where she played a significant role as the main subcontractor of Acciona Engineering.

One of her main references is the development of the Road Safety Assessment of the Interamerican Development Bank; during one year, she was responsible for coordinating the team that developed the

road safety diagnosis in the 26 countries where the Bank works, structured the Road Safety Strategy of the Bank, 5 pilot tests in several countries and design and development of a Road Safety Guide which is available online in the website of IADB. The International Road Federation (IRF) has recognised this project with the International Road Safety Award 2012. She was also responsible for the update of the road safety diagnosis conducted in 2013.

Elena has also organized and participated as an expert in several training activities, not only in Spain (10 road safety auditors training courses organized in different Spanish cities) but also in Latin America (Guatemala, Bolivia, Argentina, Nicaragua), China and other countries like FYROM/Macedonia, Hungary and Ukraine.

She has also participated in the development of dissemination campaigns in the countries/regions where Road Safety plans have been developed by the Spanish Road Association.

She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Smart Transportation Alliance, Chair of the “Smart Mobility” Technical Committee and was the Secretary of the Transport Committee of the Spanish Civil Engineers Association from 2009 to 2020.

Within KEYSTONE…

Her areas of professional interest include developement and overseeing EU-funded projects, addressing problems, and managing and supervising of national and international projects. She has garnered more than 20 years of specialized experience in the execution of international projects.