Maria-Alejandra Aristeguieta-Alvarez is the interim President Guaido’s Representative to the Swiss Confederation and to the United Nations and other International Organizations.
Ambassador Aristeguieta is an international policy expert who has spent more than 20 years in Geneva. She has represented public and private institutions at the crossroads of trade, development, social, human rights and humanitarian issues.
Over the past few years she has worked as Coordinator of NGO Iniciativa Por Venezuela, a voluntary association devoted to raising awareness of human rights violations and the erosion of Rule of Law in Venezuela at the United Nations Agencies, in international civil society and the media. Until 2017 she represented the Venezuelan Democratic Unity Bureau or Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD) in Switzerland.
Her experience in advocacy, public affairs and policy-making was built through her work as Venezuelan diplomat, as a director of public affairs agency APCO Worldwide, and as an independent consultant to international bodies and corporate institutions, including the World Bank, The World Trade Organization, Europe Aid, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, and the International Food and Beverage Alliance.
Before moving to Geneva, she served as Chief of Cabinet to the Venezuelan Minister of Foreign Trade and was a staff member of the Venezuelan Congress, where she was Executive Director of the Foreign Affairs Committee and Deputy Director of the Inter-parliamentary office.
Ambassador Aristeguieta is a Swiss-Venezuelan national, has a degree in International Studies, postgraduate studies in Economic and Integration Law and a diploma degree from the Graduate Institute on International Negotiations and Policy-making. She speaks Spanish, French and English fluently.
