CLAUDIA ROMO EDELMAN, Diplomat, Communication Strategist and Special Adviser for the United Nations and We Are All Human Foundation

Claudia Romo Edelman is a diplomat, a Special Adviser at the United Nations, and Founder of the We Are All Human Foundation.  The mission of the foundation is to advance an agenda of equity, inclusion and representation.

Born and raised in Mexico, Romo Edelman spent more than twenty-five years working in Europe, most of that time in Switzerland where she first travelled to work in the Mexican embassy.

But her desire to advocate for social causes was planted a long time ago back in her native Mexico, where a tragedy shaped her life and focus.

“I was in an earthquake when I was a teenager in Mexico,” explains Romo Edelman to Forbes Magazine. “I cared about social issues at this young age and knew that using my voice was a way to do it, to help the people and the communities that were suffering due to the earthquake.”

She also had a desire to see the world and to elevate the voices of the Latinx community.  That led her to roles at some of the world’s biggest global organizations, including UNICEF, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations, where she also led communications and advocacy for the Sustainable Development Goals and Climate Change.

  The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), also known as the Global Goals, were adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015 as a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity by 2030.

When Romo Edelman first traveled to Switzerland to work at the Mexican embassy there, she faced tremendous disappointment.  The job she was promised did not exist.

Rather than being brokenhearted, she decided to stay in Switzerland and find another job.  Her heart and persistence kept her going then and in the early days of creating We Are All Human (WAAH).

“When you fall down, you must stand up faster every time,” she offers. “We actually ran out of funds in 2017 and didn’t realize that we would continue working. We focused on the strategy and overcame this within a month. The Inspiration to create the foundation was to remind everyone that we are all humans and we belong to the same human family.”

The lesson she learned about persistence after the earthquake, in her job search in Switzerland, and with her work with the foundation in the early days, also keeps her fighting to make sure that Latinx voices are amplified.

She co-hosts the Global GoalsCast podcast and is collaborating with Arianna Huffington and Thrive Global to expand into Thrive Hispanic, a digital platform, to celebrate the voices in the Hispanic community.

Romo Edelman has also worked with the Global Fund to combat AIDS, TB and Malaria.  She holds degrees in Communications and Philosophy from Universidad Intercontinental and a Masters in Political Communications from the London School of Economics.