LUIS GILBERTO MURILLO URRUTIAMinister of Foreign Affairs of ColombiaOriginally from Chocó, Colombia, the Minister is an accomplished Mining Engineer with a Master’s in Engineering Sciences and a distinguished career in public policy. Between 2022-2024, he served as Colombia’s Ambassador to the United States, revitalizing the bilateral relationship to one of its most robust levels in recent years.Murillo served as Colombia's first Afro-Colombian Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development (2016–2018), where he expanded the nation’s protected areas, integrated ethnic communities into environmental policy, and developed a public policy framework for climate change mitigation and adaptation. His leadership also advanced the ratification of crucial environmental agreements, including the Paris Agreement. In 2014, as director of the presidential initiative Todos Somos Pazcífico, Murillo led efforts to secure a $400 million loan from the World Bank and the IDB for water, sanitation, and renewable energy infrastructure in Colombia’s Pacific coastal communities.Elected Governor of Chocó in 1997 and again in 2011, Murillo was a staunch advocate for environmental protection and community rights in his region. He also served as General Director of the Corporation for Sustainable Development of Chocó (Codechocó) and contributed to environmental governance during Antanas Mockus’s first term as mayor of Bogotá, working as Deputy Director of Planning and Acting Director of the Environmental Protection Department (DAMA), now the Secretariat of the Environment.In 2000, after surviving a politically motivated kidnapping, Murillo was forced into exile and relocated to the United States under asylum protection. As a migrant, he became a prominent advocate for Black, Afro-Colombian, Raizal, and Palenquero communities in Colombia, addressing human rights violations, social exclusion, and economic challenges. He has served as a Senior International Policy Analyst for Lutheran World Relief and as a consultant for USAID, UNDP, and FAO.Murillo was the first Afro-Latino to testify before the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee on Black community issues in Latin America. He has held teaching positions at Universidad Externado de Colombia, Universidad Santo Tomás, and Universidad Tecnológica de Chocó, and he has contributed to environmental research at the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies (CLALS) at American University in Washington, D.C., as well as at MIT as a Martin Luther King Research Fellow in the Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI).He is married to Barno Khadjibaeva, with whom he shares three children.