Mauricio Cárdenas is Senior Fellow and Director of the Latin America Initiative at Brookings Institution.

Before joining Brookings, Cárdenas served as Executive Director of Fedesarrollo, an independent policy-oriented research center in Bogotá, Colombia. He also served as Colombia’s Minister of Transportation (1998-1999), Director of National Planning (1999-2000), and Minister of Economic Development in 1994. In 1993, Cárdenas worked as the General Manager of the Empresa de Energía de Bogotá. Between 2001 and 2003, he was the first President of Titularizadora Colombiana, Latin America’s leading private firm specialized in mortgage securitization. Cárdenas was selected by CNN/Time Magazine as one of the “Leaders of the New Millennium” in 1999.

He has published several books and a large number of academic papers. Since 1992 he has taught in the Economics graduate program at Universidad de los Andes. In 2001 he was Visiting Scholar at Harvard University.

Cárdenas holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently the President of the Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA). Cárdenas also serves on the Board of Directors of ECOPETROL, the principal petroleum company in Colombia.