Helene Budliger Artieda takes over as head of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs. She is an ambassador to Thailand and has worked her way up from secretary to director in the foreign affairs department.
The future head of Seco, Helene Budliger Artieda, worked in the foreign department for almost four decades.
The name of the designated state secretary was not familiar to many insiders either. On Wednesday, the Federal Council appointed Helene Budliger Artieda to head the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco). Born in Zurich in 1965, the diplomat will take up the position at the beginning of August. It’s a surprising choice. Helene Budliger has been the Swiss ambassador to Thailand since 2019, where she is also responsible for the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos. She worked in the foreign department (EDA) for almost forty years and worked her way up there step by step.
First adventure, then career
At the age of 20 she started as a secretary in Bern. The decisive factor was above all her love of adventure, said Budliger Artieda 2019 in one video. In this function she had her first foreign assignments in Nigeria, Cuba and San Francisco. Career ambitions only came about gradually. Budliger Artieda launched her career with retraining to become a consular officer. This was followed by an assignment in Peru, where she met her husband. At her second station, in Colombia, she studied business administration at the University Externado de Colombia in Bogotá. Before that, she had graduated from commercial school in Zurich.
With her master’s degree in her pocket, she returned to Bern in 2000, where she joined the finance department of the FDFA. Budliger Artieda was promoted to boss there in 2006. She apparently impressed the then Federal Councilor Micheline Calmy-Rey. In any case, two years later she was appointed Director of Resources. This is responsible for cross-sectional functions such as human resources, finance and IT in the FDFA. With almost 400 employees, she was responsible for about half as many staff as in the future at Seco. In 2015, Budliger Artieda was drawn out into the world again. She took charge of the Embassy in South Africa before moving to her current post in Bangkok.
A kind of “Federal Manager”
With the appointment of Budliger Artieda, all five state secretariats remain in women’s hands. Her predecessor Marie-Gabrielle Ineichen-Fleisch submitted her resignation in August last year. Federal Councilor Guy Parmelin’s Economics Department (EAER) set up a ten-person search committee to look for a suitable successor. In addition to people from the EAER, the committee also included former politicians, trade unionists and business representatives. The position was publicly advertised. According to Parmelin, the Economics Department received 39 applications.
The Commission also approached possible candidates on its own initiative. Budliger Artieda did not belong to this group; she applied for the position. Even in interested circles, hardly anyone had the designated state secretary on their radar. Accordingly, observers comment on their choice with caution. The fact that Budliger Artieda is, so to speak, a career changer caused amazement, but is not interpreted negatively. You should benefit from word of mouth. People who have worked with Budliger Artieda attest to her leadership and quick wits. They suspect that she will interpret her new role as a kind of “federal manager”.