Santiago Rodríguez obtained a Licentiate in Tourism (four-year program) from the University of Azuay, Ecuador, in 2000. While studying, he created the Tourist Information System of Southern Andes Ecuador, which combined multimedia and printed resources. After graduating, he worked at Galápagos National Park, facilitating tourism development planning with local communities, until 2003. Subsequently, Santiago directed the Tourism Program of Cajas National Park, where he developed and implemented a range of management tools, until 2011. During that period, he also authored, co-authored, and/or edited various publications related to the Park. In several occasions, Santiago was appointed to provide technical cooperation in tourism management to Municipal governments in Perú. In 2011, he was assigned as the Coordinator of the Inter-institutional Committee for the declaratory of the Cajas Massif as a World Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO, granted in Paris on May 2013. Between 2012 and 2014, he was also designated as Technical Secretary of the Paute basin’s Trust Fund FONAPA, a model initiative for the conservation of water sources within the Biosphere. Specially during the Biosphere and FONAPA initiatives, Santiago facilitated decision-making between local, national and international stakeholders from the public, private and communitarian sectors. In 2014 he was awarded a scholarship from the Ecuadorian government to conduct PhD research at KU Leuven, in Belgium, the most innovative University in Europe according to Reuters. Based on systems thinking and social capital theories, between 2015 and 2017 he developed analytical methodologies to understand how to improve the collective capacities of a destination to attract international visitors that match local development objectives. The application of his methodology was demonstrated in the case of southern Ecuador as a destination in relation to the German market. As a result, five articles are published in peer-reviewed international scientific journals. In 2018, after completing the last specialized doctoral course on "Exploitation of Research Technology and Knowledge Transfer” Santiago was awarded his PhD in Sciences as Dr. in Tourism by KU Leuven. Since 2018 he is working on the construction of commercial and cooperation links between Europe and America. Thus, he has designed and initiated the implementation of International Market Access Programs for innovation and commercialization, based on capacity building and technology transfer to local actors through private - public alliances. Also in the commercial area, in 2019 Santiago performed as external consultant and coach for the German BMZ’s IPD Program for Sustainable Tourism and Market Access, supporting Ecuadorian and Nepali companies to access German Markets. In the academic area, also during 2019, Santiago initiated an International Academic Cooperation Platform in Tourism, between Belgium and Ecuador, to support entrepreneurship and sustainable development. During this period, he also lectured several courses at University level, introducing UN’s Sustainable Development Goals as a transversal subject in his classes. In 2020, Santiago moved permanently to Germany from where he collaborates as Vice-President of Tourism Research & Strategy for Herrmann Global, a tourism think tank in the USA and Europe, providing research-based data for destinations to perform highly effective international marketing campaigns to acquire specific profiles of international visitors. Santiago specializes in implementing innovative information technologies and techniques for data collection, analysis and generation of strategies and actionable insights to attract international visitors with the profile of interest of the destination.