title: Igor Garafulic
text: # Igor Garafulic
  
  Igor Garafulic Olivares is a Chilean economist, academic, and former intendant of the Santiago Metropolitan Region under the 2006 - 2010 administration of president Michelle Bachelet.
  
  ## Education
  
  Son of exiles, during his childhood he lived in Venezuela, Sweden and Mozambique. At age fifteen, he returned to Chile, completing his secondary education at the Instituto Nacional (National Institute) in Santiago.
  
  Garafulic then studied business engineering at the University of Chile, earning a mention in economics where he started his political career as a student leader, first in the Radical Party and then the Party for Democracy.
  
  ## Career
  
  His career began as a director for Santiago's National Youth Institute (INJ) in the year 1990 when he entered the Economic Directorate of the Foreign Ministry. He left the department to become an economic adviser on North America. After earning a Master of Science degree from Oxford University, where his thesis was on the implications for Chile of its entry into North American Free Trade Agreement. Until his appointment as intendant, he served as Director of Multilateral Economic Affairs of the Foreign Ministry, under the responsibility of representing Chile in the World Trade Organization (WTO), Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
  
  Since 1990, he joined the negotiating teams of the free trade agreements (FTAs) that Chile has signed. In 2005, he participated as "Chief Negotiator of the Agricultural Chapter" in the FTA with China and joined the Joint Study Group that evaluated the FTA with Japan. He also participated as a negotiator of the Government of Chile on FTAs with the United States, European Union, South Korea and New Zealand, responsibilities turned from the Economic Department of the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of Agriculture.
  
  In November 2008, Garafulic replaced Álvaro Erazo as the intendant of the SRM following Erazo's appointment as the Minister of Health.
  
  ## Personal life
  
  Garafulic is married to Macarena Hermosilla and has two children.
  
  