Ana Lya Uriarte

Ana Lya del Carmen Uriarte Rodriguez (born 17 July 1962) is a Chilean politician and academic. In 2014, during Michelle Bachelet's second presidential period, Uriarte served as the Chief of the Cabinet of The Presidency. She was also the Minister for the Environment for Chile from 2007 to 2010 and the Secretary General of the Presidency in 2023.

Early life Uriarte was born in Santiago on 17 July 1962, she was the only child of a lower middle class family. Uriarte became a mother when she was thirteen She had to leave her school because it was prohibited for teen mothers to continue studying, so she continued studying in a night school. After two years and when her son was old enough to be care in the day by her grandmother, she returned to high school in another area, where nobody knew her, hiding the fact that she was a teen mother. After a difficult time at school facing discrimination as a single and teen mother, Uriarte continued to succeed due to her hard work.

Career When the Catholic church founded the Vicariate of Solidarity to support work in defence of human rights, she worked with Alfonso Insunza helping the victims of General Pinochet as a lawyer. Early in the 1990s she went to Germany for two years where her then-husband was studying International law at Heidelberg University.

Uriarte returned to the University of Chile where she became a Professor of Environmental Law. She taught on the Masters course in Environmental Law. She worked on a human rights programme for the government from 1993 to 2003. She replaced by María Ignacia Benítez.

In 2012 she was a partner in a Chilean Law firm still specialising in the Environment.