Luis Alberto Moreno

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Luis Alberto Moreno (born May 3, 1953) is a Colombian diplomat and journalist. He was elected president of the Inter-American Development Bank in July 2005.

Moreno was appointed to be Colombia’s Ambassador to the United States in September 1998 by President Andrés Pastrana and ratified by President Alvaro Uribe upon his election in May 2002. Prior to his post as Ambassador, Moreno served both the public and private sectors in Colombia. Immediately prior to his appointment in Washington, he served as representative for the Andean Region of WestSphere Capital, a private equity firm focusing on investment opportunities in Latin America, from August 1997 to July 1998. Previously, he served as senior advisor to the Luis Carlos Sarmiento Organization, one of the leading banking & financial groups in Colombia, from November 1994 to August 1997.

From 1991 to 1994, during the administration of President César Gaviria, Moreno worked in the Colombian Government in a variety of leadership positions. From December 1991 to July 1992, Moreno was the President of the Instituto de Fomento Industrial (IFI), the Colombian government’s industrial finance corporation, and a holding company for many of the largest state enterprises in the country. In July 1992, he was named Minister of Economic Development.

Upon leaving the Ministry in January 1994, he was tapped to chair Andrés Pastrana’s Presidential Campaign. Previously, Moreno was Executive Producer of “TV Hoy”, an award-winning news program, from January 1982 to September 1990. Moreno been invited on numerous occasions to write op-eds and articles on Colombian and international politics and economics for such newspapers as The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Miami Herald and El Tiempo, and in such magazines as Foreign Affairs en Español and Semana.

Moreno obtained Bachelors degrees in Business Administration and Economics from Florida Atlantic University in 1975, and an MBA from the American Graduate School of International Management at Thunderbird University in 1977. For his distinguished work in the field of journalism, he was awarded a Neiman Fellowship by Harvard University to undertake studies at that institution from September 1990 to June 1991.

He is married to Gabriela Febres-Cordero, and has two children, Nicolás and Natalia.