Nobel Peace Prize laureate María Corina Machado is the leader of Venezuela’s democratic movement and a key advocate for freedom in Latin America. Having won the opposition primaries in 2023 with an overwhelming 92 percent of the vote, she was arbitrarily disqualified by the Nicolás Maduro regime from participating in the 2024 presidential elections. Machado proceeded to unite the country around the call for dignity and freedom, leading the national campaign for Edmundo González that finally obtained 67 percent of the vote.

An industrial engineer (Universidad Católica Andrés Bello) with a master’s in finance (Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración) and selected as a Yale World Fellow, Machado has always innovated in the service of freedom. In 2002, she cofounded Súmate, the citizen electoral watchdog that collected 3.5 million signatures to trigger a recall referendum against Hugo Chávez. In 2010, she was elected congresswoman with the highest vote count in Venezuelan parliamentary history. Machado also founded and leads VENTE Venezuela, a classical liberal party that advocates for individual liberty, the rule of law, and market economy.

In addition to the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, she has been awarded with the Sakharov Prize (2024), the Václav Havel Human Rights Prize (2024), the Freedom House’s Annual Award (2025), and many others. She was included on the TIME 100 list (2025) and BBC’s 100 Women List (2018).