Jožka Hegler is the new Director of the City of Ljubljana City Administration.

She comes in to replace the Director and later Acting Director of the City of Ljubljana City Administration Vasja Butina.

Jožka Hegler was born in Novo Mesto on 14 April 1953. After attending high school in Trbovlje, in 1978 she graduated from the University of Ljubljana Architecture Faculty with a thesis entitled ‘Rational, but human accommodation’.

She completed her internship in the development department at GP Vegrad, focusing on the field of hard-fabricated buildings. Her career continued in public open exhibition design at the Slovenian Building Centre. During this period, she and her colleagues took part in major professional discussions on the standardisation of residential building. At the end of 1985, she was employed in the public administration in the Spatial Management Committee at Ljubljana Center local authority. Her work centred on the issue of construction permits. In the last year preceding local self-government reorganisation, she was Spatial Management Secretary and a member of the Ljubljana Center local authority Executive Council for this field, where in addition to spatial matters she also oversaw municipal infrastructure, housing and the denationalisation of land, buildings and dwellings. Subsequently she spent over three years as State Secretary at the Economics Ministry, and was responsible for construction and the building materials industry and the conformity of industrial technical regulations with the EU acquis communautaire. Her field of work also included oversight of the implementation of the processes of public procurement and public-private partnerships into our legal system. In this period she not only became acquainted with regulative formation processes but also all of the major operators in this field and their professional associations.

In 1996, she led an economic delegation to the second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) and World Assembly of Cities and Local Authorities in Istanbul with the twin themes of ‘Adequate shelter for all’ and ‘Sustainable human settlement development in an urbanising world’.

In 1998 she was appointed Director of the Ljubljana local authorities’ Public Housing Fund, and meanwhile, until 1 July 2002, carried out the tasks of the authorised Head of the City of Ljubljana’s Department for Real Estate. In line with the Public Funds Act, starting in July 2002, the two organisational forms of housing funding were reorganised into the City of Ljubljana Public Housing Fund. Twice, on 26 May 2003 and again on 21 May 2007, Ljubljana City Council appointed her Director of the City of Ljubljana Public Housing Fund. She carried out these tasks until 30 September 2012.

On 1 October 2012 she became the Director of the City of Ljubljana City Administration. She chose this job due to the excellence of Mayor Zoran Janković’s team and because she is sure that the City of Ljubljana City Administration can become an even better service not just for city residents but also for all the visitors to the most beautiful city in the world.

From its inception in 2000 she was the Vice President and from 2004 to 2011 the President of the Housing Association of Slovenia. She had previously been a member of the Board of Management at the Real Estate Association at the Slovenian Chamber of Commerce, the housing funds’ section until the establishment of an independent chamber. Until February 2006 she was a member of the Supervisory Board of the Housing Fund of the Republic of Slovenia. As a representative of the Housing Association of Slovenia and the Association of Municipalities and towns of Slovenia she was a member of all national housing councils except those actually within the Ministry.

In the past she was a member of the supervisory or management boards of Salonit Anhovo d.d., Ingrad VNG Celje, the Slovenian National Building and Civil Engineering Institute, ZRMK Building Institute d.d. and the Slovenian Chamber of Commerce’s Construction and Building Materials Industry Association and Engineering Association. She remains President of the Professional Council of the annual Megra construction fair at Gornja Radgona. In 2007 she received an award for long-term work in the organisation of the Megra fair. Until 2003, when she asked to step down, she was a member of the professional council for the Trade Mark of Quality in Construction and a member of a project implementation group for a Trade Mark of Technical Quality for housing. Her professional and dedicated work won her recognition from ZRMK. Ever since its inception, she has been a member of the editorial board of Gradbenik (‘Constructor’) magazine. Since 2009 she has been President of the Scientific Advisory Board for Construction at the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia.

Her participation in conferences in the housing field includes organisational work and expert contributions. She was given an award by the Slovenian Chamber of Commerce’s Real Estate Business Chamber at the jubilee 20th conference on the real estate business.