Dr. Mauricio Cárdenas is Professor of Professional Practice in Global Leadership at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and Director of the MPA in Global Leadership. He is also Global Senior Research Fellow at Columbia’s Center on Global Energy Policy where he conducts research on energy and climate policy.
During the administration of Juan Manuel Santos, Dr. Cárdenas was Colombia’s energy minister 2011-2012 and finance minister 2012-2018. He was chosen by Euromoney as finance minister of the year in 2015. He served in three other cabinet positions in previous governments (Economic Development, Transport, and Planning).
He has been twice executive director of Fedesarrollo, Colombia’s leading policy research center, and Senior Fellow and Director of the Latin America Initiative at the Brookings Institution. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington D.C.
He was a member of the WHO Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (2020-2021), co-chair of the Taskforce on Carbon Pricing and Net Zero (2021), and Chair of the ‘Doing Business’ External Review Panel (2021).
He holds a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is also a former president of the Board of Governors of the IMF and the World Bank (2016) and of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA).
He regularly writes op-eds in El Tiempo, Project Syndicate and Americas Quarterly.
