The United States Senate confirmed in the early hours of Saturday the adviser to President Joe Biden Julissa Reynoso Pantaleon as the country’s new ambassador to Spain and Andorra.
The Senate also confirmed as the new ambassador to the European Union Mark Gitenstein, former representative in Romania; and former Barack Obama chief of staff (2009-2017) Rahm Emanuel as ambassador to Japan.
Both Reynoso’s and Gitenstein’s confirmation were “out loud”, a procedure by which the individual votes of the senators are not counted, but rather they express “yes” or “no” in unison and the option is imposed that in the opinion of the chairman of the session it has more support.
Of Dominican origin, Reynoso held the position of chief of staff in the office of the first lady, Jill Biden, as well as co-chair of the White House Council on Gender Policy, created by the current Administration.
The Madrid embassy will be the second to be occupied by Reynoso, who was already the highest diplomatic representative of the United States on another occasion, in Uruguay, during the Barack Obama administration.
Among other positions, she has also held that of undersecretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs of the State Department.
Trained at the universities of Cambridge, in the United Kingdom, and in the American universities of Yale and Columbia, the ambassador in Spain has been a partner of the Winston & Strawn law firm, dedicated to international law. Additionally, he worked for Federal Judge Laura Taylor Swain.
Reynoso has been very involved in immigration issues and last March was part of a delegation from the Biden Government that visited the border area in the state of Texas and a detention center for immigrant minors in Carrizo Springs.
That month she also granted an interview to Efe in her capacity as co-chair of the new White House Gender Policy Council, in which she spoke of the need to move towards “zero tolerance” with violence against women and to promote that principle. also internationally.
She explained then that the Biden government has among its priorities the creation of a national plan of action to end gender violence.
For his part, Mark Gitenstein has worked on projects in Central and Eastern Europe, and as ambassador in Romania, he focused on the fight against corruption and the defense of democratic institutions, work that he later continued with his work in NGOs.