Ms. Bárcena Ibarra served as the Chef de Cabinet to the former Secretary-General before serving as the Under-Secretary-General for Management.
Earlier in her career, Ms. Bárcena Ibarra served as Deputy Executive Secretary of ECLAC, and in this capacity she contributed substantively and increased interagency collaboration to provide a regional perspective on the Millennium Development Goals and on Financing for Sustainable Development.
As Chief of the Environment and Human Settlements Division of ECLAC, she heightened the profile of the Regional Commission in the areas of climate change, sustainable energy, fiscal policies and environment. She previously served as Coordinator of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), as well as Adviser to the Latin American and Caribbean Sustainable Development Programme in the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
She was part of the Secretariat that was in charge of preparing the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1992.
Previously, she served in the Government of Mexico as the first Vice-Minister of Ecology and as Director-General of the National Institute of Fisheries.
She holds a Bachelor of Science in biology from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México and a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard University.