Georgetown Americas Institute

Andrés A. Durán is a visiting fellow at the Georgetown Americas Institute, where he will contribute to the programming of the  Ambassador Series. He  served as Ambassador of Uruguay to the United States, from 2020 to 2025, during the government of President Luis Lacalle Pou. He was dean of the Latin America diplomatic corps both under Biden and Trump administrations. During his tenure, Uruguay and the U.S. deepened their economic partnership, through trade and investments, and a close political relationship that was reflected in new security and education agreements, initiatives to foster innovation and entrepreneurship, bipartisan bills, and fulfillment of all requirements to obtain Visa Waiver Program status (currently in implementation phase), among others. Before becoming an ambassador, he worked in private equity and real estate deals in Latin America, as an executive advisor of investment manager Ashmore Group; previously he worked over 20 years as a corporate lawyer in the region, particularly in M&A transactions and FDI projects, as partner of law firms based in Uruguay. He was also a Visiting Lawyer at Slaughter and May in London, and worked at IDB Invest in Washington DC. Ambassador Durán has an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management, an LLM in International Legal Studies from the Georgetown University Law Center (as a Fulbright Scholar), and a Juris Doctor from the Catholic University of Uruguay.