News Release

Alejandro Toledo, Former President of Peru, Joins Brookings

September 10, 2009

Alejandro Toledo, a former president of Peru, has joined Brookings as a nonresident senior fellow, Brookings President Strobe Talbott announced today.

Toledo joins the Latin America Initiative, a joint effort by the Global Economy and Development and Foreign Policy programs at Brookings, where he will focus on the interrelationship between poverty, inequality and the future of democratic governance.

“As a statesman and a scholar, President Alejandro Toledo has been a distinguished proponent and advocate of democracy, and the types of democratic tools and social initiatives required to effect positive change in the countries of Latin America,” said Kemal Derviş, vice president and director of Global Economy and Development. “I welcome his cooperation with Brookings as a key contribution to our understanding and our work on the region.”

Alejandro Toledo served as Peru’s president from 2001 to 2006. Prior to his election, Toledo served as the chairman of the Central Reserve Bank’s Economic Advisory Committee; labor minister of Peru; and as general director of the Institute of Economic and Labor Studies in the Ministry of Labor and Social Development in Lima, Peru.

“We are delighted to welcome President Toledo to Brookings’s Latin America Initiative,” said Martin Indyk, acting vice president and director of the Foreign Policy Program. “His leadership and knowledge of political, economic and social development issues in Latin America makes him a unique asset to the policy debate in Washington and the research agenda of the Initiative.”

Currently, Toledo is the Payne Distinguished Visiting Lecturer at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University and a visiting scholar at its Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. President Toledo has been a distinguished fellow in residence at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and a visiting scholar and research associate at Harvard University and at Waseda University in Tokyo. He is a full professor of economics (on leave) at the University of ESAN in Peru. He holds a Ph.D. in economics of human resources from Stanford University and a B.A. in economics and business administration from the University of San Francisco.

“We are honored that President Toledo has agreed to join the Latin America Initiative,” said Mauricio Cárdenas, director of the project. “President Toledo will bring first-hand experience and tremendous insight and vision to our work on the key issues facing the nations of the hemisphere.”

The Latin America Initiative at Brookings focuses on the most critical economic, political and social issues facing the region. Research activities focus on a wide range of topics, including the challenges that a changing world economy pose for the region; the impact of organized crime on democratic institutions and economic prosperity; trade and investment policies; strategies to tackle poverty and inequality, combating climate change; and Cuba’s political transition.

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