Maria Lorente has been Regional Director for Latin America since March 2021. She began her career at AFP in Montevideo in 2001 as a multimedia journalist before moving to the Los Angeles bureau two years later as a Spanish-language correspondent. She later returned to Montevideo as shift supervisor in 2010, before being posted to Brussels in 2011.

In 2013, she became Head of the Latin America desk and, in 2014, Chief Editor for the region, a role she held until 2019, when she was appointed Buenos Aires bureau chief.