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.