Education and early life

The son of a lawyer father and dancer/choreographer mother who both opposed the dictatorship in Argentina, he reached Switzerland in 1981 with his sister and mother after having passed through Italy and Mexico. He obtained political refugee status in 1983.^{[citation needed]}

Antonio Hodgers studied at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, receiving a degree in international relations in 1999 and an advanced degree in development studies in 2003.^[1][2]

With his interest in entrepreneurship, in 2002 he launched dvdmania.ch, a DVD rental and sale business running on bike delivery, followed by Mobilidée where took on the roles of managing partner and mobility manager in this office of sustainable mobility consulting for public authorities and private companies.^[3] He ran the company until his accession to the Council of State in December 2013.^{[citation needed]}

Early political career

Between 1993 and 1996, he sat in the Youth Parliament of Meyrin, a municipality of the canton of Geneva, an assembly which he chaired in 1995–1996.^[3] His political involvement then continued at a canton level. Between 1998 and 2006, he chaired the association "J’y vis, J’y vote" ("I live here, I vote here"), which promotes the political rights of foreign citizens on a municipal level. He would go on to be the campaign manager for referendum campaigns in 2001 and 2005, the date on which foreign nationals in Geneva who have been settled in Switzerland for 8 years obtained the right to vote at local elections.

In 1997, he was elected to The Grand Council (Parliament) of Geneva. He was the youngest member of the assembly. He would then go on to be member of the Bureau (1999-2001), and then group chairman (2002 and 2003). Between 2006 and 2008, he was the head of the Genevan branch of the Green Party of Switzerland. He served in the canton's parliament until 2007.^[4]

In 2007, he was elected to the National Council (Lower house of the Federal Assembly), and then re-elected in 2011, holding the presidency of the Green Party of Switzerland parliamentary group from 2010 onwards, where he was said to represent the "pragmatic" side of the party.^[5]

In 2012, Antonio Hodgers was one of only a handful of people from Romandy to be invited — upon official invitation from Jean-Daniel Gerber, the president de the Swiss Public Utility Society — to make the 1 August speech in the Grütli meadows, as part of the Swiss National Day.^[6]