Carlos Ibargüen is an international consultant with 30 years of experience as a senior government affairs and communications executive, advocacy & reputation management strategist, and public servant.

Carlos enjoyed a career spanning over two decades with Royal Dutch Shell, where he held senior global, regional, and country roles in the Middle East, Europe, and North and South America in the fields of government relations & communications. He spent his last nine years with Shell as Head of the company’s Latin America and Caribbean Government & Regulatory Affairs team.

Prior to joining Shell, Carlos served as a high-ranking public official, serving under three Bolivian administrations. During his tenure in government, he led the Investment Promotion Directorate within Bolivia´s Secretariat of Industry and Commerce and spent three years as First Secretary in Charge of Commercial Affairs at the Embassy of Bolivia in Washington D.C.

As a subject matter expert in Foreign Direct Investment, Carlos was selected as Bolivia’s principal negotiator in charge of negotiating Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs) with Chile, Ecuador, and The Czech Republic, as well as the Investment Chapters in the Free Trade Agreements between Bolivia and MERCOSUR and Mexico.

Carlos was also appointed sole government representative on the Board of Directors of the National Center for Investment Promotion of Bolivia and worked as a consultant for Foreign Investment Advisory Service (FIAS) of The World Bank Group.

He is currently a member of the Latin American Energy Roundtable (LAER) at the Center for Energy Studies at Rice University’s Baker Institute and for 6 years sat on the Board of Trustees of the Canning House, which is the UK’s leading think tank on Latin America. He has also been a keynote speaker and panelist at events and conferences at the Baker Institute at Rice University, The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth University, The Interamerican Dialogue, Council of the Americas, New York City Hall, World Trade Center Baltimore, and the US State Department.

He holds a BSc degree in Political Science with a concentration in Economics from Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore, USA, and an MSc in Public Administration and Public Policy from the London School of Economics & Political Science, where he attended as a Chevening Scholar.