María Fernanda Espinosa began her career working with indigenous communities on rainforest conservation in the Ecuadorian Amazon. She later became an advisor to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on biodiversity and climate change, and served as its Regional Director for South America. Espinosa held several key diplomatic roles, including as Ecuador’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Trade, and Integration (2007-2008, 2017-2018), Ambassador to the UN in New York (2008-2009) and Geneva (2014-2017), and President of the UN General Assembly (2018-2019). As foreign minister, she led climate change negotiations and mediated peace talks between Colombia and the ELN in 2017. She was also responsible for foreign investment and trade policies. As Minister of National Defense (2012-2014), she managed Ecuador’s defense strategy amid tensions with Colombia, focusing on organised crime and crisis coordination.
In 2018, Espinosa was elected President of the 73rd Session of the United Nations General Assembly, becoming the first woman from Latin America and the Caribbean to hold this position since the UN’s founding in 1945. During her tenure, she gained international recognition as an advocate for global governance, multilateralism, health diplomacy, and addressing the climate crisis. She organised key events promoting women’s empowerment and political participation and chaired the adoption of important UN agreements, including the Declaration on the Rights of Peasants, the Global Compact on Refugees, and the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration. In February 2019, she launched the International Year of Indigenous Languages.
She currently serves as a Member and Executive Director of GWLvoices and President of the Cities Alliance. She also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group and the Board of Trustees of the Nizami Ganjavi International Center; Co-Chair of the Climate Governance Commission; Member of the UN Secretary General´s Advisory Board on Human Security, the High Level Advisory Council for the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, UNAOC; and Commissioner of the International Commission on the Economics of Water.
Before her international career, Espinosa was an Associate Professor and Researcher at FLACSO, where she established and led the Program on Socio-Environmental Studies. She is also a prolific writer and poet, having received Ecuador’s National Poetry Prize in 1990. Her writing focuses on the Amazon, cultural and natural heritage, sustainable development, climate change, intellectual property, foreign policy, regional integration, defense, and security.
Espinosa has received numerous awards for her work, including the Rehabilitation International Award in 2019 for advancing the rights of persons with disabilities, recognition as one of the BBC’s 100 most inspiring women globally in 2019, and the Sundance Film Festival Women’s Leadership Award in 2020. She has also been honored with the “5th Sun Award” for advancing Indigenous rights in 2021 and the “Eleanor Roosevelt Award” in 2022 for her contributions to global human rights and diplomacy.
