Alberto Rubio
Marcelo Risi, until now UN Tourism (formerly World Tourism Organization -WTO-) Director of Communications, has left his post to join the Cabinet of the Secretary General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), Rebeca Grynspan, with whom Risi worked as Head of Media when the Costa Rican was at the head of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB), between 2015 and 2018.
Marcelo Risi will join a team that, on the 60th anniversary of UNCTAD’s creation, is playing a leading role in the Russia-Ukraine-Turkey negotiations on grain exports and grappling with the economic impact of the war in Gaza and the blockade of the Suez Canal.
A change that, as he explained to The Diplomat, “was necessary, even essential because UNWTO does not communicate anything. However, UN Tourism tells you who we are, the UN, and what we do, Tourism. It was time to give more visibility to this organisation”.
Marcelo Risi is a journalist and economist. Before joining the UNWTO, he was chief economics editor for Deutsche Welle radio’s Latin American Service, producer for the BBC Latin American Service in London and correspondent for the BBC World Service in Madrid.
In an interview with the Uruguayan tourism website ‘Portal de América’, the former UN Tourism Communications Director declared that Rebecca Grynspan’s offer “is a call that cannot be refused, it is an honour, a great opportunity and a nice challenge”.
UN Tourism has opened a process to select the person who will replace Marcelo Risi at the head of its Communications Directorate, but it is not yet known whether the selection process has been finalised.
