Ricardo Rosselló

Ricardo Antonio "Ricky" Rosselló Nevares (Latin American Spanish: [roseˈʝo neˈβaɾes]; born March 7, 1979) is a Puerto Rican former politician, businessman, neurobiologist and educator. He served as Governor of Puerto Rico from 2017 until his resignation in 2019. In 2021, he returned to active politics by receiving 53,823 write-in votes as a congressional shadow delegation member, becoming the first Puerto Rican politician to be directly nominated. He is the son of Pedro Rosselló, a former governor of Puerto Rico and pediatric surgeon. Rosselló studied chemical engineering biomedical engineering and economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), researching adult stem cells, earned his master’s and doctorate from the University of Michigan and postdoctoral studies in neuroscience and neurobiology at Duke University.

In 2010, Rosselló founded the political advocacy group Boricua ¡Ahora Es! to advocate for changing the current political status of Puerto Rico. Rosselló supports Puerto Rican statehood. Following several years of political advocacy, Rosselló announced that he would seek the nomination of the New Progressive Party (PNP in Spanish) for Governor of Puerto Rico in 2016. After winning the New Progressive Party primary, Rosselló was elected governor in the 2016 general election, defeating five other candidates.

In July 2019, Rosselló faced widespread controversy after a group chat on the Telegram app between Rosselló and his staff was made public. The chat contained offensive language, including sexist, homophobic, and misogynistic, and elitist remarks, as well as discussions on the operation of Internet troll networks on social media. A message by one of the participants in the chat mocked the struggles faced by Puerto Ricans in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which had caused around 3,000 deaths, although this has been refuted by the author. The leak led to widespread protests across Puerto Rico, with demonstrators calling for Rosselló’s resignation. On July 17, 2019, an estimated 500,000 people participated in protests in Old San Juan. Initially, Rosselló stated his intention to complete his term as governor, but he later announced that he would resign, which he did on August 2, 2019. In 2020, the PFEI (Panel sobre el Fiscal Especial Independiente) appointed a special independent prosecutor to investigate the controversy. During the investigation police officers seized several cell phones and laptops that had been used by the alleged members of the chat. Analysis of the devices was extremely limited as officers were not granted an official warrant, and as such could not legally require the owners of the devices to share their passwords. Despite this, officers were still able to access some information, According to the investigation report, officers were able to determine that several of the devices were involved in the group chat at some point, but were unable to find any specific messages or contents of that chat, suggesting that all messages had been erased. The investigation was unable to determine when the chat's contents were deleted, which meant there wasn't enough evidence to charge the device's owners with destruction of evidence. During the investigation, the prosecutor received a "pen drive" from Raul Maldonado Nieves, (the son of Roselló's Secretary of the Treasury, Raul Maldonado Gautier.) Investigation of this drive found that it too had been tampered with. "The result of the evaluation is that this document is a copy of one that was created on January 20, 2019 and modified on July 12, 2019. By not delivering the original requested, it is not possible to determine its origin and what the modification made consisted of." The FEI's report concluded that all collected documentation of the chat was “not original, edited, and manipulated," but found that there was insufficient evidence to criminally prosecute any party involved and prove their guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt." During his governorship, Rosselló was elected to be the president of the Council of State Governments (CSG), apart from being awarded the education policymaker of the year and recognized for outstanding achievements in public health.

Rossello published The Reformer’s Dilemma in 2024, a book about his political experience and challenges with reforms. The book was a finalist in the American Book Fest.

Rossello is currently the Chief Vision Officer for The Regenerative Medicine Institute, a longevity and stem cell research institute and clinic.