María Fernanda Espinosa

Espinosa was born 7 September 1964 in Salamanca, Spain during a stay of her parents in the city. She is fluent in French and English and has working knowledge of Portuguese. She has interests in poetry and ecology. She studied at Lycée La Condamine and graduated in the early 1980s.[4]

She holds a master's degree in Social Science and Amazonic Studies. She also has a postgraduate degree in Anthropology and Political Science from the Facultad Latinoamericano de Ciencias Sociales in Quito and a licentiate in Applied Linguistics from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador.

Even though Espinosa has stated in her résumé and in official UN publications that she holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University,[5][6][7][8] no record of her doctoral dissertation is to be found in the university's archives. She has repeatedly maintained to be a Ph.D. candidate,[9] which Rutgers denied.[10]

In addition to that, she won the "First National Poetry Prize of Ecuador" in 1990.[11]

Under President Rafael Correa, Espinosa was Minister for Foreign Affairs, Commerce and Integration from January 2007 to December 2007. She was then Special Adviser to the President of the Constituent Assembly, Alberto Acosta from December 2007 to February 2008 before being appointed as Ecuador's Permanent Representative to the United Nations. She presented her credentials as Permanent Representative on March 7, 2008.[1] From October 2009 till November 2012 she was Coordinating Minister of Heritage.[12]

In November 2012 she got the post of Minister of National Defense as incumbent Minister Miguel Carvajal stepped down to run for the National Assembly elections of 2013. She is the third female to lead the Ministry of National Defense after Guadalupe Larriva and Lorena Escudero.[13] In March 2013 some controversy arose after television channel Ecuavisa reported there was unrest in the military concerning the promotion of certain colonels to generals. President Correa ordered Espinosa to take legal action against Ecuavisa, saying that the information Ecuavisa possessed was false. On 18 March 2013 Ecuavisa apologized and confirmed that basic verification procedures had not been followed.[14] She resigned as Minister on 23 September 2014.[15]

In October 2014 Espinosa was named Permanent Representative of Ecuador to the United Nations in Geneva. She succeeded Luis Gallegos.[16] In her capacity as Permanent Representative she defended the case of Julian Assange in a discussion on arbitrary detention in September 2016.[17]

On 24 May 2017 Espinosa was appointed as Minister of Foreign Affairs in the government of President Lenín Moreno.[18]

• International Gender Champions (IGC), Member[19]
• World Future Council, Member[20]

• Media related to María Fernanda Espinosa at Wikimedia Commons