Raúl Gangotena

Former Ecuadoran Ambassador to the United States

Raúl Gangotena is currently President of Enlace Andino LLC, a firm established to provide financial links between migrants and their families in the Andean countries — and a member of the Indigenous Enterprise Institute of the United States.

After serving as the Ambassador of Ecuador to the United States from 2003 to 2005, he was a Democracy Fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy. Previously, he served as Chief of Staff of President Sixto Duran Ballen in 1996, and the Executive Director of the National Modernization Council, CONAM in 1997 and 1998.

In the private sector, he has served as the Executive Director of the Quito Chamber of Commerce from 2001 to 2003 and the CEO of Metrozona free trade zone from 1999-2001. He was also active in the media as a columnist of El Universo, Guayaquil, El Comercio and Hoy, Quito from 1989 to 2003.

Previously, he was also a member of the Ecuadorian Board of the Fulbright Commission and the Editorial Board of the El Comercio. He was a professor at the National Polytechnic School and the San Francisco University — and President of the Universidad de Las Américas from 1998 to 2000.

Ambassador Gangotena was the winner of the 6th Essay Contest of the Latin American Center of Administration for Development, CLAD, in 1989 — and has written several published papers focusing on the decentralization of the public sector in Ecuador and Latin America.

He received a Chemical Engineering degree from the National Polytechnic School in Quito, Ecuador and in 1974 an MBA from the University of New Mexico on a Fulbright Scholarship.

Mr. Gangotena, born in Quito in 1945, is married to Anne Patteet, a Belgian, and has four children.