Martha Isabel “Pati” Ruiz Corzo
General Director
Martha “Pati” Ruiz Corzo, looking for answers moved her family to Sierra Gorda from the city of Querétaro, where she was a music teacher at J.F. Kennedy American School. In the Sierra Gorda, a mountainous rural community, they discovered an abundance of pleasure in a simple life. In 1987, she co-founded GrupoEcologico Sierra Gorda (GESG) with Roberto Pedraza Muñoz and local citizens to create conciousness around the biodiversity of the region and the threats to it. They built a grassroots movement for the creation of a regenerative option for the region. In 1997, GESG successfully led consensus forSierra Gorda´s declaration asa protected area, by then-President Dr. Ernesto Zedillo. In Mexico, it is the only such area created thanks to civil society. Ruiz Corzo was named the Federal Director of the Reserve, where she remained the head until 2009 when she returned to the helm at GESG.
The result has been the continuous operation of a grassrootsenvironmental movement that has transformed the local population´s natural resource management practices, has reoriented public spending and inter-agency cooperation to reach multiple stakeholders through the following programs:environmental education, the diversification of productive skills, solid waste management, regenerative practices in soils and forests, healthy food production, and forest resource utilization, community tourism in the Sierra GordaDestination, 55 microenterprises operating successfully, in addition to valuing forest services to reduce carbon footprints as a public policy in the state and for private donors.
Today she is a member of the Board of Directors of ForestTrends (Washington DC) and Leaders pour la Paix (Paris, France). Awards received: 1996 Ashoka Social Entrepreneur; 2001 Schwab Foundation/World Economic Forum, 2002 Rolex Prize for Enterprise, the 2012 National Geographic-Buffet Conservation Leadership Award, the 2013 Champions of the Earth UN Environment Award, the 2014 Collaborative Partnership on Forests WangariMaathai Award, and the 2018 Innovators for the Americas Prize.
