On 5 March 5, 2026 the EERI Board of Directors elected Dominican university professor Ashley Morales Cartagena as EERI vice president for 2026. Morales Cartagena has served on EERI’s board of directors since 2023.
Morales Cartagena is a geotechnical engineer and disaster risk reduction professional with over 15 years of experience working across academia, industry, government, and international development. She is the founder and president of GeoRisk Consulting and a professor and researcher at the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra (PUCMM) in the Dominican Republic, where she previously served as director for four years. At the PUCMM she founded the EERI PUCMM Student Chapter.
She previously led the Disaster Risk Management and Geotechnical Engineering Departments at the Dominican Republic’s National Bureau of Seismic Evaluation and Infrastructure Vulnerability (ONESVIE). She has also served as an international consultant for organizations including UNESCO, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
Ashley co-chaired the EERI Younger Members Committee from 2019 to 2021 and received the EERI Younger Member Award in 2018. She was also recognized as one of the ASCE New Faces of Civil Engineering (2019).
She holds an MS in Geotechnical Engineering as a Fulbright Scholar from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an MS in Construction Management from INTEC, and a BS in Civil Engineering from PUCMM.
10 March 2026