| Clara López | |
| Office: | Minister of Labour |
| Appointer: | Juan Manuel Santos |
| Predecessor: | Luis Eduardo Garzón |
| Office2: | Acting Mayor of Bogotá |
| Appointer2: | Juan Manuel Santos |
| Predecessor2: | Samuel Moreno |
| Successor2: | Gustavo Petro |
| Order3: | 6th |
| Office3: | Auditor General of Colombia |
| Nominator3: | Supreme Court of Justice |
| Appointer3: | Council of State |
| Predecessor3: | César Augusto López |
| Successor3: | Piedad Zúñiga |
| Birth Name: | Clara Eugenia López Obregón |
| Birth Date: | 12 April 1950 |
| Birth Place: | Bogotá, D.C., Colombia |
| Nationality: | Colombian |
| Profession: | Economist, lawyer |
Clara Eugenia López Obregón (born 12 April 1950) is a Colombian politician who was the Minister for Employment. She also served as Acting Mayor of Bogotá from 2011 to 2012. A Harvard-trained economist,[1] she was the Alternative Democratic Pole's nominee for President of Colombia in the 2014 election.[2] [3]
López is also a University of Los Andes-trained lawyer with a doctorate from the University of Salamanca, and served as the sixth Auditor General of Colombia from 2003 to 2005.
López was born on 12 April 1950 in Bogotá, Colombia to Álvaro López Holguín (grandson of Alfonso López Pumarejo) and Cecilia Obregón Rocha.[4] (cousin of painter Alejandro Obregón Roses)[5] She attended Colegio Nueva Granada in Bogotá,[5] but was later sent to live in McLean, Virginia in the United States, where she attended the Madeira School, a prestigious preparatory boarding school for girls.[5] After graduating high school in 1968, she attended Harvard University where she became an active participant in the student movement opposed to United States involvement in the Vietnam War. She graduated with an A.B. magna cum laude in June 1972.[5]
She was married on 13 September 1980 in Tenjo, Cundinamarca to Edmond Jacques Courtois Miller,[6] a wealthy Canadian banker whom she met while in Harvard, but they later divorced after Courtois was charged and pleaded guilty to insider trading charges in New York in 1983, having peddled confidential takeover information while a vice president at Morgan Stanley's mergers and acquisitions department from 1974 to 1977.[7] She later remarried to Carlos Romero Jiménez, whom she met while they both served in the Bogotá City Council. She has no children.