Juan Manuel Santos

Juan Manuel Santos served as  President of Colombia from 2010 to 2018. He currently serves as Chair of The Elders, an organization founded in 2007 by Nelson Mandela to align global leaders working for peace, justice, human rights, and a sustainable planet. Santos received the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to end Colombia's fifty-plus years of civil war. Before serving as President, he held positions as Colombia’s Minister of Foreign Trade, Minister of Finance, and Minister of Defense.

Santos holds business and economics degrees from the University of Kansas and completed his post-graduate studies at the London School of Economics, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, and Harvard University, where he obtained a Master’s in Public Administration. He serves on several boards, including as chairman of the Compaz Foundation, which he created to contribute to peacebuilding in Colombia, as well as the International Crisis Group, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Santos has been an Angelopoulos Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, a visiting professor of development at Oxford University, the George W. Ball Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, a special professor at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and a senior policy fellow and distinguished visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies.