An engineer by training, Mauricio Macri has been President of the Republic of Argentina since December 2015, following a career in business, sports, and as Mayor of Buenos Aires City.

Prior to being elected President, Macri served as Mayor of Buenos Aires City, first elected in 2007 and re-elected with 64% of the vote in 2011. As mayor, Macri pursued regeneration programmes in many of the city’s poorer areas, expanded access to early education and healthcare, improved the city’s financial management and expanded arts and cultural investments.

He was also responsible for pushing through much-needed public transport and environmental initiatives to improve sustainable mobility in the city. He created the first rapid-transit bus system in the country, reducing carbon emissions and traffic in Buenos Aires and its surrounding suburbs. He also expanded bike access and usage in Buenos Aires City, creating 155km of bicycle lanes and a city bike-share system, boosting the number of people that cycle in the city every day to over 150,000.

Before being elected Mayor, Macri was President of Club Atlético Boca Juniors (CABJ), the most popular soccer club in the country. Overseeing a vast operation, Macri reduced debt and fixed years of financial mismanagement – resulting in the team’s most successful period in decades, winning several major domestic titles and international trophies.

After graduating with a degree in civil engineering from the Catholic University of Argentina, Macri studied at the Columbia Business School in New York, and then worked in the automobile and construction sectors as an engineer, business analyst and executive.

In 1991, he was kidnapped and held for ransom for 12 days, an episode he has said led him to focus his career on public service, to reduce poverty, violence and corruption.

Macri is married to businesswoman Juliana Awada and has four children. He was born in 1959 in Tandil, Argentina.