A consultant and public speaker, he is also a nonresident senior fellow at The Brookings Institution, an adjunct professor at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, a distinguished visiting professor at the Annenberg School of Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California, and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center's Mexico Institute.

The Casamitjanas, a Catalan family, crossed the Pyrenees into France at the end of the Civil War and after the fall of Barcelona, and were held in a French concentration camp.

They sought asylum in Mexico, when then President Lázaro Cárdenas welcomed thousands of Spanish Republicans who fled after the victory of Francisco Franco's fascist forces.

In 1991, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-American Affairs and during that period he also represented Mexico at the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (OPANAL).

In 2000–2003, Sarukhán was designated Chief of Policy Planning to the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, and served as Consul General in New York City in 2003–2006.