Ernesto Zedillo, former President of Mexico

Ernesto Zedillo was President of Mexico from December 1994 until December 2000. President. Zedillo 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 at the outset of his term and 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.

After leaving office, President Zedillo became Chairman of the UN High Level Panel on Financing for Development and was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the London School of Economics. He served as Co-Coordinator of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Trade and was Co-Chairman of the UN Commission on the Private Sector and Development along with Prime Minister Paul Martin of Canada.

President Zedillo is currently the Director of the Center for the Study of Globalization and Professor in the Field of International Economics and Politics at Yale University and is a leading voice on globalization, especially its impact on relations between developed and developing nations. 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. He is currently Chair of the Global Development Network and Co-Chairman of the International Task Force on Global Public Goods. He was appointed by the UN Secretary-General to serve as his Envoy for the September 2005 World Summit in which heads of state and government reviewed implementation of the Millennium Declaration. He is the recipient of Honorary Doctor of Laws degrees from Yale and Harvard Universities. He is also 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.