Who is Daniel Noboa, the new president of Ecuador?

Businessman Daniel Noboa became the elected president the youngest in the history of Ecuador 35 years old, he will lead the Andean country for about 15 months, from next December to May 2025, when the term of the conservative Guillermo Lasso was supposed to end.

Born on November 30, 1987, Noboa won the presidency in the second round. An opportunity that his father, Álvaro Noboa, one of the richest men in the country thanks to the banana trade, tried five times without success.

Noboa comes to the Presidency after a short-lived political career, as he was a member of the assembly between 2021 and 2023 and from there launched in the presidential race, He did not start as a favorite, but he played the role of an “outsider”, he was seen as a new face in politics, and his performance in the election debate of the first round catapulted him to the second round.

As a member of parliament, he was the chairman of the Committee for Economic Development and was criticized for leading the organization of a trip – according to him, paid for by a private company – of six members of the assembly to Russia in the middle of the Russian-Ukrainian war. one of the main importers of Ecuadorian bananastogether with the European Union (EU).

Noboa is the eldest of four brothers in a family of big businessmen and politicians, because in addition to his father’s presidential aspirations, his mother Annabella Azín, a doctor, was a member of parliament and a candidate for vice president.

He is also the grandson of Luis Nobo Naranjo, one of the most important businessmen in the country in the 20th century and one of the richest men in Ecuador in his time who introduced Quaker brand oatmealwith which his grandson was humorously called during this election campaign.

In short, calm and far from any kind of confrontation, Noboa claims to be center-left, although he has more liberal economic approaches.

He is currently expecting the birth of his second child from his marriage with his second wife, nutritionist and influencer Lavinija Valbonesi.

He had his first-born daughter with his first wife, Gabriela Goldbaum, with whom Noboa had problems in the divorce, to the extent that he has a dispute with the Spanish insurance company Mapfre, because the woman allegedly had access to his bank information. through employees of this company.

Noboa studied business administration at New York University’s Stern School of Business and continued his career specializing in three master’s degrees. 2019. Business administration and public administration at the Kellogg School of Management; 2020 at Harvard University. And in 2022, he completed his master’s degree in political communication and management at George Washington University.

At the age of 18, Noboa founded his first company “DNA Entertainment Group”, dedicated to the organization of events.

There he gained experience to work in his family company, Noboa Corporation, a few years later. He was the youngest director of shipping in the company’s history. He was commercial director until June 2018, and his main task was to oversee the global sales strategy for all food products.

A music lover, Noboa doesn’t believe that “hyper specialization” nowadays, which is why he also studied physics and marketing.