Ernesto Zedillo is Director of
the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization and Professor
in the field of international economics and politics at Yale
University.
Born in Mexico City, he attended Mexican
public schools, graduated from the School of Economics at
the National Polytechnic Institute, then earned a Ph.D. in
economics at Yale. He held several positions at the Central
Bank of Mexico over the course of a nine-year tenure with
that institution, including deputy manager of economic research,
general director of the trust fund for the renegotiation
of private firms’ external
debt, and finally, deputy director. He served in the national
government from 1987 to 1993 as Undersecretary of the Budget,
Secretary of the Budget and Economic Planning, and Secretary of Education.
In
1994 he was elected President of Mexico. For the next six
years he led his country into the new millennium with an
unflinching devotion to economic reform and a strong commitment
to democratic values. He pulled the nation out of a financial
crisis right at the start of his term and the result was
that under his leadership, Mexico experienced its highest
five-year period of GDP growth in recent history. At the
same time, social programs were allocated an increasing
proportion of the federal budget each year, reaching their
highest historical share in 2000.
During his presidency Ernesto
Zedillo undertook bold democratic and electoral reforms,
opening the way for greater political pluralism in a nation
long dominated by a single party. The peaceful revolution
he led finally brought real democracy to the people of
his country. At the World Economic Forum in Davos,
in describing Mr. Zedillo’s decisions and actions
to make Mexico’s
political transition a reality, former President Bill Clinton called
this “one
of the great acts of statesmanship in the history of modern democracy.”
Since
leaving office in 2000, Ernesto Zedillo has remained a leading voice
on globalization, especially its impact on relations between developed
and developing nations. He served as Chairman of the United Nations
High Level Panel on Financing for Development in 2001; the
panel’s Report was
presented in June of 2001. He currently serves as Co-Coordinator
of the Task Force on Trade for the U.N.
Millennium Project which launched its Report, Trade
for Development, on January 17, 2005.
Along with Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin, he Co-Chaired the Commission
on the Private Sector and Development which presented its report, Unleashing
Entrepreneurship, to Kofi Annan on March 1, 2004.
He is Co-Chairman of the International
Task Force on Global Public Goods, sponsored by the Governments
of Sweden and France. He recently was elected to Chair the Global
Development Network, a global network of research and policy institutes
that address problems of national and regional development.
He is a member of the Trilateral Commission,
the International Advisory Board of the Council on Foreign
Relations, and the Board of Directors of the Institute
for International Economics. With decorations from the
Governments of 32 countries, he is the recipient of Honorary
Doctor of Laws degrees from Yale and Harvard Universities,
an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University
of Miami, an Honorary Degree from the University of Massachusetts
Amherst, and he served as Harvard's Commencement Speaker for
2003. He is the recipient of the Franklin D. Roosevelt Freedom
from Fear Award, the Gold Insigne of the Council of the Americas,
the Tribuna Americana Award of the Casa de America of Madrid,
and the Berkeley Medal, UC Berkeley’s highest honor.
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