Gabriela Sommerfeld

María Gabriela Sommerfeld Rosero is the Ecuadorian foreign minister. She led tourism for Quito, and has been the CEO of multiple airlines and a leading hotel.

Life
Sommerfield was educated at the Universidad San Francisco de Quito and she went on to take an MBA at the Instituto Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico.

In 2002 she was the President of the Ecuadorian airline Aerogal. That airline is now Avianca Ecuador.

In 2016 she was managing tourism for the city of Quito in a year when there had been a large earthquake which had largely avoided the city but it had caused an estimated three billion dollars of damage and killed nearly 500 people. In 2015 about 700,000 tourists had come or travelled through Quito.

She was announced as the CEO of the short lived Equair airline when it was launched in January 2022. Although Frederik Jacobsen was also announced with a similar title. She held a high position on the airline industry before she became the CEO of a hotel.

In March 2023 she was the CEO of a hotel in Quito and on 23 November 2023 at the Carondelet Palace she was formally made the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Human Mobility by the new President Daniel Noboa. Other appointments that day included Mishel Mancheno who became the legal secretary ,Niels Olsen and Arianna Tanca. New ministers in the government also included Ivonne Núñez, Monica Palencia and Zaida Rovira.

In December 2023 she and Ecuador's Production and Trade Minister Sonsoles García met Antony Blinken the US Secretary of State. In the same month the Attorney General Diana Salazar Méndez had made arrests in Ecuador and in January the country was in crisis as the President announced an internal fight against several drug gangs after the prison escape of José Adolfo Macías Villamar. Sommerfeld was in Davos as the 60 day state of emergency unfolded.