Ambassador Gert Rosenthal is a Distinguished Fellow at New York University’s Center on International Cooperation and a Guatemalan economist.
He did his undergraduate as well as his graduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley, alternating his career between public service in Guatemala and in various international organizations. He was the Secretary-General of the National Planning Secretariat of Guatemala before joining the Secretariat of the Central American Common Market. He returned to public service in Guatemala for two years before joining the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), where he served first as the Director of the Mexico Office and eventually ascended to the post of Executive Secretary of the organization from 1988 to 1997. After retiring from the UN secretariat he returned to public service in Guatemala for one year, before taking up the post as Permanent Representative of Guatemala to the United Nations for five years, followed by two years as Foreign Minister of Guatemala. In 2009 he returned to the UN for a second tour as Permanent Representative, to lead the Guatemalan delegation to the Security Council in 2012-2013.
He retired from the Guatemalan Foreign Service at the end of 2014 and subsequently has worked in academia and as a consultant. In that regard, he was the Chair of the Advisory Group of Experts for the 2015 review of the UN’s peacebuilding architecture and one of the Eminent Persons for the 2020 UN Peacebuilding Architecture Review. He has written numerous articles both on development issues and on international relations. His latest publication is: Inside the United Nations: Multilateral Diplomacy Up Close (London: Routledge, 2017).