New president of PROCOLOMBIA

Bogotá, August 19 (Pxp).- María Claudia Lacouture, a specialist in Finance and International Relations, took over today as the president of Proexport.

María Claudia Lacouture, who has a masters in Economics and Marketing from Cornell University, mentioned that among the major goals for the entity during these next four years are contributing to the tasks of diversifying Colombia’s export markets, finding new and different markets, attracting foreign investment that creates employment, doubling international tourism to Colombia, and entering the list of top 20 countries with excellent business environments in the world.

The new president of PROCOLOMBIA stated that her main objective is to carry out the instructions of the president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos, and of the minister of commerce, industry and tourism, Sergio Díaz-Granados, in the sense that the organization must perform a protagonist role in executing the government’s strategy focused on job growth and formalizing the economy.

“We will take this moment to evaluate the objectives, with a critical but constructive spirit, to strengthen our contribution to the government’s strategy by making much more efficient use of our resources and by taking advantage of our market knowledge, the experience of our professionals, and the network of support that our offices abroad give us,” declared Lacouture.

María Claudia Lacouture’s professional career is strongly tied to PROCOLOMBIA, where she started working in 1996, first in the Market Intelligence Unit in Bogotá and then as an advisor of Marketing and International Trade, and later as director of tourism in PROCOLOMBIA’s commercial office in the United States and then as vice-president of Imagen País (“Country Brand”). Two years after becoming the vice-president of Imagen País, Lacouture left PROCOLOMBIA to work in the presidential campaign of Juan Manuel Santos.

Lacouture received recognition for her work leading the “Colombia is Passion” marketing campaign during her time at Imagen País, and in particular for having achieved a strong commitment from the business sector to support the campaign to change Colombia’s image abroad, create a network of international communication outlets to showcase Colombia in a positive light, and for the excellent positioning of the country brand worldwide.

Lacouture also led the “Discovery Colombia through its heart” campaign, through which Colombia was showcased to the world through a series of six large, interactive hearts and forty smaller ones that displayed unique and celebratory aspects of Colombian culture in cities throughout the United States.

As director of tourism of PROCOLOMBIA in the United States, Lacouture was part of the team responsible for the development and execution of a strategy to achieve the return of cruise ships to Colombia and to host the annual meeting of the Florida-Caribbean Cruise Association in Cartagena. Through commercial missions of high profile cruise line executives, as well as journalists and wholesalers, PROCOLOMBIA was able to include Colombia in the sector’s specialized circuit.

Lacouture was a researcher at the Swiss multinational human resources and consulting firm Egon Zehder International, and an administrator and coordinator of content for Yupi Internet, where she managed the content of the B2B initiative for Yupi.com, as well as the development of amarillas.com, a bilingual website dedicated to integral online business in the Americas.

Furthermore, Lacouture also worked as a professional in international trade and commerce at Trade Winds Networks, also in Miami, developing markets for agriculture products and promotional strategies for Colombian coffee in the US market.

For further information, please contact: Claudia Bedoya - cbedoya@proexport.com.co