Half of her life has been dedicated to developing an idea that she had when she was only 8 years old. Today, she is proud to have developed the technology that can improve the world. She created a company through it and now provides relief to the planet and helps improve the quality of the air we all breathe.

Mariana with her dad Manuel and the first prototype she used at the school fair. PHOTO: EL
COLOMBIANO
This story begins when Mariana, at the age of 8, innocently asked her father why black circles formed on the car roof when it rained.
“We lived on a main avenue in a neighborhood in Envigado. Many cars and buses passed by. In my ignorance at the time, I saw that after washing the car in the morning, it was completely dirty again in the afternoon. There were some stains in the shape of drops. I asked my dad and he told me that the smoke emitted by cars got wet by the rain. Then I replied that if rain could wet dirt, we could make a machine that wets smoke and collects pollution.”

Instead of ignoring his daughter’s moment of clarity, her father encouraged her to explain how she would do it. She began to throw out ideas that later became a project for her school fair at Liceo Francisco Restrepo Molina. She designed a first prototype with a jar and hoses, which she now treasures as her most precious possession.