After seven years as IPS Editor in Chief Miren Gutierrez is leaving her post and returning, for personal reasons, to her home country, Spain. Mario Lubetkin accepted her resignation with regret, offering his heartfelt thanks to Miren for her extraordinary work with the agency since 2002 and above all her leadership of the IPS editorial group of professional colleagues in all regions.

Two of these colleagues, Diana Cariboni based in Montevideo and Sanjay Suri based in London are stepping up to lead the editorial team of IPS. Diana and Sanjay will manage the Spanish and English services of IPS respectively and share the responsibilities of the Editor in Chief role, while a permanent solution will be defined in 2010. Pablo Piacentini, one of the founders of IPS, and the current Director of the IPS Columnist Service will support Diana and Sanjay in their work.

Diana Cariboni (Argentinian) has been the Regional Editor of IPS Latin America since March 2003 and is the editorial director of Tierramerica. She began her career as a journalist in 1992 working for various media outlets in Uruguay, such as El Observador and El Pais newspapers, and Sarandi and Setiembre FM radio stations. Besides specialising in technology, science, and public health, she has written research articles on these subjects. Diana also worked as a writer on international politics, economy and environment for the Third World Institute publications (a subsidiary of the Third World Network). She is married and the mother of five children.

Sanjay Suri (Indian) has been with IPS since May 2002 as both Regional Editor and London Correspondent. Before joining IPS, he was Europe Editor for the Indo-Asian News Service, and previous to that copy editor and then acting chief sub-editor with the Indian Express, the largest circulated Indian daily at the time, in charge of the production of a national broadsheet. Sanjay holds an M.A. in English literature from the University of Delhi and an M.Sc in social and organisational psychology from the London School of Economics. He did media studies at Stanford University. He is author of “Brideless in Wembley - In Search of Indian England”, published in London September 2007. Sanjay is regularly invited as a commentator on Indian news channels.

IPS offers Miren its sincere thanks and good wishes as she embarks on a new phase of her life, and looks forward to continuing to collaborate with her through specific consultancies and initiatives from 2010. We thank Diana, Sanjay and Pablo for stepping up to their new responsibilities and offer them our full support.