Christina Figueres is a former diplomat of Costa Rica with 35 years of experience in high-level national and international policies and multilateral negotiations. She is an internationally renowned climate change leader with valuable experience working for the public sector, non-profit, and private institutions, as well as a deep understanding of the various stakeholders involved in climate change. She is the daughter of the former President of Costa Rica, and her father Jose Figueres was the third President of Costa Rica, leading the 1948 Revolution and establishing a modern democratic system. In 1982, she served as an envoy at the Embassy of Costa Rica in Bonn, Germany, marking the beginning of her public service career. Afterwards, she moved to the United States and became the REIA Secretary of the Renewable Energy Department of the Americas. She founded the non-profit organization CSDA, the Center for Sustainable Development of the Americas, in 1995 and served as the director of the center for eight years. Since 1995, she has been involved in international negotiations on climate change issues and has represented Costa Rica in negotiations on the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol. She has also held important positions in many non-governmental organizations involved in the field of climate change and provided consulting services to some private institutions on climate change issues. She designed and helped establish national climate change projects throughout Latin America, and served as a senior advisor to governments and private companies. In 2001, she received the Planet Award from National Geographic magazine in the United States. In 2007, Figueres represented Latin America and the Caribbean and served on the CDM Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). From 2008 to 2009, he was elected as the Vice President of the COP of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention. Since July 2010, Christina Figueres has been appointed as the Executive Secretary of the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Over the next six years, she actively committed herself to rebuilding the global climate change negotiation process on the basis of fairness, transparency, and collaboration, ultimately leading to the historic 2015 Paris Agreement. For many years, she has been involved in areas such as climate change, sustainable development, energy, land use, technology, and financial cooperation. She often gives public speeches and articles, and can speak Spanish, English, and German.