Thirty-sixth session of ECLAC

María Ángela Holguín Cuellar is a Colombian political scientist and diplomat and currently Minister for Foreign Affairs of Colombia.

She has a wealth of experience in Colombian foreign policy and a track record of two decades in the public and private sectors. She has held senior Colombian government posts in institutions such as the Office of the President, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Attorney General’s Office.

As part of her wide-ranging professional experience in the diplomatic field, she has also served as Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Colombia and Acting Minister (1998), Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Colombia to the United Nations (2004-2006), Colombian Ambassador to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (2002-2004) and First Secretary at Colombia’s Embassy in France, with responsibility for Commercial Affairs (1992).

She was also Coordinator for Colombia at the Annual Meeting of the Inter-American Development Bank and at the Inter-American Investment Corporation (1997) and was Executive Director of the Regional Conference for Children in Latin American and the Caribbean (1997). She was Regional Director for Latin America of Worldview International Foundation between 1999 and 2002, and acted as Adviser to the President of the Andean Development Corporation (CAF) in 2006 and CAF Representative in Argentina between 2008 and 2010.

She was Chief of Staff for the Office of the Vice-President of Colombia (2006-2008), Coordinator of the International Affairs Committee for Álvaro Uribe’s presidential campaign (2001-2002), Assistant Director of the Administrative Department of the Office of the President (1996) and Private Secretary to the Office of the Public Prosecutor (1991).

In the academic sphere, she was the Director of the Programme for Strengthening Democracy at Los Andes University in 1988. She graduated in Political Science from the Faculty of Political Science of Los Andes University, with a specialization in Diplomacy and Strategy from the Centre for Diplomatic and Strategic Studies (CEDS) in Paris (France). Likewise, she holds a specialization in Public Administration and Administrative Institutions from Los Andes University and has studied Negotiation Theory and Practice at Harvard University and French Civilization and Literature at Paris-Sorbonne University.