Ximena del Rocío Peña Pacheco (born 11 February 1976) is an

Ecuadorian Ecuadorians ( es, ecuatorianos) are people identified with the South American country of Ecuador. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Ecuadorians, several (or all) of these connections exist and are collect ...

politician. She served as a member of the

National Assembly In politics, a national assembly is either a unicameral legislature, the lower house of a bicameral legislature, or both houses of a bicameral legislature together. In the English language it generally means "an assembly composed of the repre ...

from 2013 to 2020, and was the presidential candidate of the incumbent

PAIS Alliance PAIS Alliance is a centre-left social democratic political party in Ecuador. In 2016, it had 979,691 members. Founded by Rafael Correa in April 2006, the party soon found success amid the "pink tide" period in Latin America. The party's early pe ...

party in the 2021 election.

Career

Ximena Peña was born in

Cuenca, Ecuador Santa Ana de los Cuatro Ríos de Cuenca, commonly referred to as Cuenca (Kichwa language, Kichwa: ''Tumipampa'') is the capital and largest city of the Azuay Province of Ecuador. Cuenca is located in the highland (geography), highlands of Ecuador ...

, on 11 February 1976. She moved to

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

at the age of 19. She earned an

associate degree An associate degree is an undergraduate degree awarded after a course of post-secondary study lasting two to three years. It is a level of qualification above a high school diploma, GED, or matriculation, and below a bachelor's degree. The fi ...

from

LaGuardia Community College LaGuardia Community College is a public community college in New York City. It is in the Long Island City neighborhood of Queens in and part of the City University of New York. LaGuardia is named after former congressman and New York City mayor ...

, then entered

Baruch College Baruch College (officially the Bernard M. Baruch College) is a public college in New York City. It is a constituent college of the City University of New York system. Named for financier and statesman Bernard M. Baruch, the college operates und ...

. At Baruch, she completed a

Bachelor A bachelor is a man who is not and has never been married.Bachelors are, in Pitt & al.'s phrasing, "men who live independently, outside of their parents' home and other institutional settings, who are neither married nor cohabitating". (). Etymo ...

and

Master of Business Administration A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

. Peña returned to Ecuador in 2008 and joined the

political party. In the 2013 general elections, Peña was elected to the

for the United States and Canada

overseas constituency An overseas constituency or overseas electoral district is any electoral district located outside of a nation-state's borders but which is recognized by the state's government as a district for the representation of its expatriate (and, technically ...

. She was reelected in

2017 File:2017 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The War Against ISIS at the Battle of Mosul (2016-2017); aftermath of the Manchester Arena bombing; The Solar eclipse of August 21, 2017 ("Great American Eclipse"); North Korea tests a ser ...

. In May 2019, she became the president of the Justice and State Structure Commission in the National Assembly. She also led the parliamentary group for Human Rights and Mobility. In 2020, Peña was coordinator of her party's legislative bloc in the assembly during the third legislative period of the National Assembly, a position she resigned in July 2020. In a national party convention, Peña was chosen as the presidential candidate of the PAIS Alliance for the 2021 election. Her vice-presidential candidate was Patricio Barriga, who had served as a Secretary of Communications under the Correa government. Peña was the only female presidential candidate in this election, although there were several female vice presidential candidates.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pena, Ximena 1976 births Living people PAIS Alliance politicians Members of the National Congress (Ecuador) Women members of the National Assembly (Ecuador) People from Cuenca, Ecuador Baruch College alumni 21st-century Ecuadorian women politicians 21st-century Ecuadorian politicians