María Araceli De Haas Matamoros is a graduate of the Defense Strategy and Policy course at the William J. Perry Center in 2021. She was named the first woman to assume the position of Director-General of Special Affairs (National Security) of the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs (Secretaría de Relaciones Exteriores). She recently represented Mexico in its first time participation at the Munich Security Conference and at the IISS Shangri-La Asian Security Summit, the most important defense dialogue in the Pacific. She has recently published the scientific article “Security and defense policies during the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons learned by Mexico, the United States and Canada” at the Journal ‘Estudios en Seguridad y Defensa’ [17(33), pp. 121-143, Escuela Superior de Guerra, Bogotá, Colombia].