Juan Manuel Santos was the President of Colombia, from 2010 to 2018, and the sole recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2016 for “his resolute efforts to bring the country’s more than 50-year-long civil war to an end”. Before being President, he was Minister of Foreign Trade, Minister of Finance and Minister of Defense.
He holds a Business and Economics degree from the University of Kansas and did post-graduate studies in the London School of Economics, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and in Harvard University, where he obtained a Master’s in Public Administration. He is currently the Chairman of the Board of Compaz Foundation, which he created to contribute to peacebuilding in Colombia.
He is a member of the board of the International Crisis Group, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Wildlife Conservation Society, and is also a member of the Planetary Guardians and the Global Commission on Drug Policy.
Santos has been Angelopoulos fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, visiting professor of development at Oxford University, George Ball visiting professor at Columbia University, special professor at Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and senior policy fellow and distinguished visiting professor at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.
In November 2024, he was appointed Chair of The Elders, the organization founded by Nelson Mandela, made up of an independent group of global leaders working for peace, justice, human rights and a sustainable planet.