José Antonio Ocampo Gaviria is the Will Clayton Fellow in International Economics at the Baker Institute. He is also co-president of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University, where he is a professor and fellow. Until mid-2007, he was the United Nations under-secretary-general for economic and social affairs. In this post he directed the United Nations’ Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) and chaired the United Nations’ Executive Committee on Economic and Social Affairs. With his appointment by Kofi Annan, United Nations former secretary-general, Ocampo obtained the highest post in the history of the United Nations to be held by a Colombian.

Previously, Ocampo was executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean from 1998 to 2003, and he held several government positions in his country, including minister of finance and public credit, director of the national planning department and minister of agriculture. As an academic, he has been director of the Foundation for Higher Education and Development; professor of economics at the University of the Andes (Colombia) and the National University of Colombia; and visiting professor at Yale University and the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford. He has authored many books and articles on macroeconomic theory and policy, economic development, international trade and economic history.

Ocampo was born in Cali, Colombia, in 1952. He studied economics and sociology at the University of Notre Dame, United States, where he graduated in 1972. He earned a doctorate in economics at Yale University in 1976 and received the Alejandro Angel Escobar National Science Award in Colombia in 1988.