Less than six weeks before he takes office, Jalisco Governor-elect Aristoteles Sandoval traveled to the United States this week to tap into some learned minds and forge relationships that he hopes will be useful over the next six years.
Meetings have been arranged with a number of of organizations and individuals, including Cecilia Martinez, the director of UN-Habitat, a United Nations agency that seeks to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities.
The chief themes for discussion during the visit are social and urban development, innovation, environmental sustainability, says Sandoval’s international affairs advisor, Rodrigo Aguilar.Other meetings have been set up with Amartya Sen, winner of the 1998 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science and Julio Frenk, a former Mexican Health Secretary and now the Dean of the Faculty and T&G Angelopoulos Professor of Public Health and International Development at the Harvard School of Public Health. While at Harvard Sandoval will meet with Merilee S. Grindle, the director of the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
Sandoval has also been taking classes in English, according to another report.
At 39, Sandoval will become one of the state’s youngest governors. The former mayor of Guadalajara will end 18 years of rule by governors from the conservative National Action Party (PAN) when he takes office on March 1.