Juan Carlos Holguín Maldonado (Quito, 1983) was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility by President Guillermo Lasso Mendoza in January 2022. Since May 2021, he has carried out missions as "roving ambassador ad honorem" for specific issues, serving as presidential advisor and leading Ecuador's "vaccine diplomacy" strategy. Previously, he was responsible for the democratic transition between the incoming and outgoing administrations.
He has been a private entrepreneur since the age of 18 and is a member of various boards of directors in the fields of technology, tourism, insurance, and sports. He is also the director and founder of several civil society organizations, notably serving as a member of the board of directors of the think tank Ecuador Libre. He is a founding member of Se Puede, a program for productive and educational inclusion in Ecuador. He was a member of the Board of Regents of the University of the Americas in Ecuador and has been a member of its advisory board since 2014.
He was a Konrad Adenauer Foundation scholar and, as such, has participated in the organization's international political training programs since 2006, mainly in Germany, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay. His training focused on regional integration mechanisms, democracy, and governance.
He is a serial entrepreneur with the New York-based global organization Endeavor and Silicon Valley accelerator Y Combinator. He has been a public analyst and member of various panels on innovation and technology. In 2014, he was Secretary of Productive Development and Competitiveness for the city of Quito, where he promoted the "Invest in Quito" initiatives and the Competitiveness Council, among others. In 2019, he ran for mayor of Quito for the CREO movement.
He holds a bachelor's degree in Communication from the University of San Francisco in Quito. He obtained a master's degree in Public Policy from Georgetown University, where he focused his research on soft diplomacy mechanisms. He also obtained a master's degree in Development from UNSAM in Argentina. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Government at the University of Navarra.
He has been an editorial writer for the newspaper La Hora, the digital blog 4P, and the magazine Diálogo Político. He is the author of the book « Juego Limpio ».