The grandson of refugees in Mexico, Ambassador Arturo Sarukhan is a career diplomat. He was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs and was posted in 1993 to the Mexican Embassy in the United States where he first served as Chief of Staff to the Ambassador, and then as head of the counternarcotics office. In 2000 he became Chief of Policy Planning at the Foreign Ministry and was appointed by the President as Mexican Consul General to New York City in 2003. He resigned from this post and took a leave of absence from the Foreign Service in 2006 to join the Presidential Campaign of Felipe Calderón as Foreign Policy Advisor and International Spokesperson, and became Coordinator for Foreign Affairs in the Transition Team. In November 2006 he received the rank of Ambassador, and in February 2007 was appointed Mexican Ambassador to the United States.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Ambassador Sarukhan played a key role in the non-governmentalBilateral Commission on the Future of US-Mexico Relations as the Executive Director of this civil society initiative.

Ambassador Sarukhan is active in various organizations such as the Mexican Council on Foreign Affairs, the Foreign Policy Association and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London; is a board member of the Philharmonic Orchestra of the Americas, and is also a part of the Executive Council on Diplomacy Ambassadors Advisory Board. He has taught in various universities and published articles on issues related to foreign policy in a variety of journals and magazines. He holds a BA in International Relations from El Colegio de México and an MA in US Foreign Policy from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), where he was a Fulbright Scholar and Ford Foundation Fellow. He has been decorated by the governments of Spain and Sweden. Ambassador Sarukhan is married and has two young daughters.