“The Brother Vicar General is the first collaborator of the Brother Superior General. He replaces him in the ordinary administration of the Institute when the Brother Superior General is absent or prevented from exercising his duties”.
Rule 127

Brother Carlos was born in Bucaramanga, Colombia, on 25 June 1960. He joined the Brothers of the Christian Schools in 1979. 

He completed his initial formation in Bogotá. In 1983, he earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Education from La Salle University in Bogotá. He also holds a Master’s Degree in Political Science from the Pontifical Xavierian University in Bogotá, where he graduated in 1991, and in 1999 he earned a Doctorate in Education from St. Mary’s University in Minnesota (United States).

His service to the Lasallian mission has led him to work as a teacher and administrator in various institutions located in rural areas of Colombia that have been ravaged by conflict and violence, such as San Juan del Cesar, in La Guajira, where he also worked as a state teacher.

For five years, he served as the Director of the Escuela Tecnológica Instituto Técnico Central de Bogotá, a public institution of higher education entrusted to the Brothers. After completing his doctoral studies in the United States, Brother Carlos moved to the municipality of San Vicente del Caguán, where he exercised his educational leadership at a time when peace talks were taking place between the Colombian government and the FARC guerrillas.

In 1998, he was honoured for his publication “Who’s Who in American Colleges and Universities” on the role of schools and universities in places of conflict, social tension and political uncertainty.

In the early 2000s, he served as Secretary of the Lasallian Latin American Region and as a professor at La Salle University in Bogotá, where he was later appointed Academic Vice-Chancellor and then, in 2008, Chancellor, a position he held for two terms until 2016.

Under his leadership, La Salle University developed self-assessment and transformation processes in academic programmes, which led to it obtaining High Quality Institutional Accreditation from the Ministry of National Education. 

Similarly, while President of La Salle University, Brother Carlos was the founder of Proyecto Utopía, Colombia’s first rural university campus, which, based on an innovative concept, offers low-income rural youth affected by violence and social exclusion the opportunity to train as agricultural engineers, leaders and entrepreneurs in their regions of origin.

In 2016, he was appointed Visitor of the Lasallian District of Bogotá, and in 2021, he was appointed as the President of the Ethiopian Catholic University in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Throughout his career, Brother Carlos has received numerous awards, including the Francisco de Paula Santander Civic Medal from the Presidency of the Republic of Colombia—the highest distinction for educators in the country—the National Peace Prize ” ” (2014), the National Solidarity Award (2016), the Jesús Maestro Award from the Inter-American Confederation of Catholic Education (2016), and the Inter-American Award from the Inter-American Organisation of Universities (2019).

In 2010 and 2022, he received honorary doctorates from St. Mary’s College in California and La Salle University in Mexico, respectively.