Rafael de la Cruz serves as Director of the office of Maria Corina Machado and the President-elect Edmundo Gonzales Urrutia in the United States. He is also a Senior Economic and Foreign Policy Advisor to their presidential campaign.
Previously, Rafael held several distinguished positions, including General Manager for the Andean Countries at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), Representative to Colombia, and Andean Region Matrix Head of the IDB's private sector branch (IDB-Invest). He has also served as a lead economist at both the World Bank and the IDB. Rafael holds a PhD in economics from the University of Paris, is a member of the Expert Network of the World Economic Forum and has authored numerous publications on economic policy, development economics, governance, and institutional reform.
Earlier in his career, Rafael was a pivotal member of the management team of the Presidential Commission for State Reform (COPRE) in the Venezuelan government. In this role, he led relations between the Federal Government and state governors and mayors. Rafael's contributions were instrumental in shaping Venezuela's decentralization policies and legislation throughout the 1980s and 1990s. He has also held positions as Director of the Public Policy Center at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Administration (IESA) and Director of the PhD program at the Center for Development Studies (CENDES) in Venezuela.