Arturo Sarukhán

Ambassador Arturo Sarukhán is an international strategic consultant and advisor based in Washington, DC, and the former Mexican Ambassador to the US (2007-2013). He is a non resident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution and distinguished visiting scholar at the USC Annenberg Public Diplomacy School. A digital diplomacy pioneer, he was the first ambassador accredited to Washington to use Twitter in an official capacity.

The grandson of conflict refugees in Mexico, he is a career diplomat and received the rank of Career Ambassador in 2006. He first served in the Mexican Foreign Ministry as deputy assistant secretary for inter-American affairs. He was posted to the Mexican Embassy in the United States in 1993, where he served as chief of staff during the NAFTA negotiations, and then as head of the Counternarcotics office until 1998. In 2000, he was appointed chief of policy planning at the Foreign Ministry, and in 2003 became Mexico’s Consul-General to New York City. In 2006, after requesting a leave of absence from the Foreign Service, he joined the presidential campaign of Felipe Calderón as foreign policy advisor and international spokesperson. He then led the Foreign Policy Transition Team. During his tenure as Ambassador to the U.S. he became the dean of the Group of Latin American Ambassadors (GRULA) to the US. 

He has been decorated by the governments of Spain and Sweden, and has received several awards and honorary degrees in recognition of his diplomatic achievements. Ambassador Sarukhan sits on several boards. In 2010, Ambassador Sarukhan was included in the List of Global Leaders of Monocle magazine and for five years in a row was included on The List of 300 Most Influential Mexican Leaders by “Líderes Mexicanos” magazine. He was Distinguished Diplomat in Residence at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a Pacific Leadership Fellow at UCSD, both during 2014. He frequently publishes opeds in the US media and participates in TV and radio. He publishes a biweekly column in Mexico City’s El Universal newspaper and is weekly contributor to Enfoque Noticias (radio) and Milenio TV. He holds a BA in international relations from El Colegio de México and an MA in US foreign policy from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) of Johns Hopkins University, where he was a Fulbright Scholar and Ford Foundation Fellow.  

Sarukhán joined the Dialogue as a Member in 2013. He formerly served on the Dialogue’s Board of Directors.

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