Mauricio Artiñano graduated summa cum laude from Tufts University in 2006, with a major in International Relations, and has a Masters in Public Policy from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. At Tufts, he was actively involved with the Institute for Global Leadership, the Tisch College of Civic Life, the International Club, and the International Relations Program (as co-founder of the Director's Leadership Council).
As recipient of the Wendell Phillips Memorial Award, he was the Class of 2006 Baccalaureate speaker at graduation, when he spoke about the various levels of impact that one can have when trying to change the world, and about how love is the most revolutionary and impactful force to do so.
Mauricio has spent most of his career with the United Nations. From 2008 to 2009, he served as a diplomat for Costa Rica during the country's two-year term on the UN Security Council. Following his Masters degree in public policy from Princeton University, he was served in the UN peace operations in South Sudan (UNMISS), Somalia (UNSOM) and for seven years with the special political mission in Colombia supporting the peace process between the former FARC-EP guerrilla group and the Colombian state. Among his various accomplishments with the Mission in Colombia, Mauricio designed the mission's first youth engagement strategy, created a network to support former combatants' reintegration projects related to tourism, and led an innovative project to train former combatants and community members as whitewater rafting guides (Rafting for Peace).
Following his HIV+ diagnosis in 2015, Mauricio has also been active in HIV/AIDS activism, including founding two initiatives for HIV awareness and anti-discrimination, in Colombia and Costa Rica.
Mau was one of the more significant human and intellectual members of my EPIIC and Institute years - and subsequently, unsurprisingly, one of the most caring, empathetic and beloved alumni of our many ensuing years.
While enrolled in the EPIIC 2003-04 colloquium, then sophomore Mauricio Artinano explored the idea of bringing together the people who had been involved in the Central American peace process to look at lessons learned 20 years later. They were advised by INSPIRE practitioner-in-residence and IGL Executive Advisory Board Member, Timothy Philips the cofounder of the Project on Justice in Times of Transition (the founding of which was inspired by the Institute’s EPIIC program in 1991),
Two years later, then a senior, with Mau's and others, including Sebatian Chaskel, Pedro Echavarria, Cynthia Medina, Andrea Petersen, and Molly Runyon, unstinting effort, that idea came to amazing fruition. The conference, “Lessons Learned from Regional Peace-Building: The Experience of the Central American Peace Process,” was held in March at Spain's Toledo Center for Peace
The students had traveled through Central America over a summer to interview some of the main protagonists in the Central American peace process of the late 80s and early 90s in preparation for the conference. The students used their research, both bibliographical and interviews, to craft and structure the agenda and discussion questions for the conference. The student group also worked on the logistics, planning and organization of the summit. More than 40 distinguished individuals who participated in the peace process -- including three former heads of state, formers guerillas, and former ministers of defense -- were in attendance at the conference, which generated thoughtful and productive discussions on the future of Central America and on the lessons that Central America’s peace-building experience can provide for the international community.
The remarkable participants included:
Vinicio Cerezo Arévalo, former President of Guatemala (1986 – 1991);
Rodrigo Madrigal Nieto, former Foreign Minister of Costa Rica under former President Arias;
General Joaquín Cuadra Lacayo, former Commander in Chief of the Nicaraguan Army;
Joaquín Villalobos, former El Salvadoran FMLN comandante;
José María Figueres, former President of Costa Rica;
Pierre Schori, member of the Sanford Commission on Central America;
Sir Marrack Goulding, former UN Under Secretary-general for Peacekeeping (1986 – 1993) and Under Secretary-General for Political Affairs (1993 – 1997);
Javier Pérez de Cuellar, former Secretary-General of the United Nations;
Oscar Santamaría, former El Salvadoran government negotiator and former 28 Secretary-General of the Central American Integration System (SICA)
Of his experience with EPIIC, Mauricio told the Tufts Journal that it was “the most challenging and rewarding academic experience of my life.” Recognized for this conference, along with his overall excellence in academics, Mauricio was named to the USA Today All-Academic First Team.
But far beyond his academic prowess, whether taking on Michael Hardt's challenging work, or challenging his EPIIC symposium program committee, what remains with me most, is Mau's deep passionate concern for humanity, his emotional intelligence and maturity, demonstrated in his galvanizing reaction to one of the most tragic incidents of my life at director of the Institute, the passing of a beloved student, his classmate Bory Damyanova. LINK
Mau, a young man of personal courage and conviction, had early on understood that EPIIC's incontrovertible strength and value was as a deep connective intellectual and caring human community. He summoned his peers even prior to Bory's accident, to mount a supporting 'Revolution of Love."
It stimulated a powerful rush to excel, to challenge one another to be the best each of us, and collectively we could be, and to support one another in meeting the rigors we demanded of a leadership challenge, that often mystified and perplexed other faculty and students, who at times cynically understood us a cult.
Together his classmates created the Bory Damyanova Award. I have tried to honor Bory, and assuredly Mau, and Bory's other friends, this way within Trebuchet. https://www.the-trebuchet.org/ibo