Ricardo Meléndez-Ortiz
Co-founder and Chief Executive of ICTSD
Ricardo MELÉNDEZ-ORTIZ is the co-founder and has acted as Chief Executive of ICTSD since 1996. Previously, he co-founded and held the position of General Director of
Fundación Futuro Latinoamericano (Quito). He has represented Colombia
as a negotiator in many multilateral fora, including serving as
permanent delegate of Colombia in Geneva and as a negotiator in the
Uruguay Round, the UNCED process, UNCTAD VIII, the Climate Change
Convention, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Montreal
Protocol. He acted as spokesperson for the G77 in several fora and
served as chair of the UN Standing Committees on Commodities and on
Trade Preferences. Earlier, he had served as Principal Advisor to the
Colombian Minister of Economic Development and as Chief of
Administration of the Office of the President of Colombia. Since 1997,
Mr. Meléndez-Ortiz has been the publisher of BRIDGES and its sister
publications, and has edited and published a wide range of books,
articles and opinion pieces in English, French and Spanish on trade and
sustainable development and conflict management. He sits on advisory
committees and the boards of several global policy initiatives,
including acting as Chair of the Global Action Network’s Council
(Cambridge, MA); a Member of the Board of Intellectual Property Watch
(Geneva) and of the Operating Board of AccountAbility (London), the
Global Governance Network of Globus et Locus (Milano) and the Steering
Committee of DfID’s Global Trade and Finance Architecture Initiative.
He has served on the U.N. Secretary General Millennium Project Task
Force on Trade; the WTO’s Director General NGO Advisory Group; and the
MOFCOM/IISD China Sustainable Development and Global Markets Task
Force. Mr. Meléndez-Ortiz holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from
Harvard University and the Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá.