Javier Santiso is a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, Professor of Economics at ESADE Business School and Managing Director at Telefónica. He is the Founder of Amerigo, the Venture Capital Funds Network powered by Telefónica and the Founder of Startup Spain, the leading platform on startups and ventures powered by ESADE Business School and Rafael del Pino Foundation.
Javier holds both Spanish and French nationalities,. He is a leading economist on emerging markets, startups and venture capital. He has authored several books (listed below) and papers published in leading referee journals and edited books published by Columbia University Press, Oxford University Press or Routledge. He is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Council on Latin America. In 2011 he was named as one the most influential iberoamerican thinkers by Foreign Policy.
A disciple of Albert O. Hirschman, his contributions deal with international political economy issues, focusing mostly on the impacts of China on Emerging Economies, the relations between financial markets and elections in emerging countries and sovereign wealth funds portfolio diversification towards emerging markets. He has been consultant for leading international organizations like the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB), private banks (Société Générale) and member of advisory boards on emerging markets for Pfizer (in New York) and Lazard Frères Gestion (in Paris). He also advised governments on sovereign wealth funds reforms (Colombia) and leads at ESADEgeo a major annual report on sovereign wealth funds with a special focus on Latin America and other emerging markets.
In 2010, he joined Telefónica International as a Director where he is charge of the strategy and development of Latin American Innovation Funds focused on Venture Capital and Growth Capital. He later became Director of Innovation Funds at Telefónica SA and Director of Telefónica Europe Chairman's & CEO Office. He also joined ESADE Business School as a Professor of Economics and Vice President of the ESADE Centre on Global Economy and Geopolitics (ESADEgeo). He is also the Chair and Founder of the OECD Emerging Markets Network (EmNet), a platform of 50 leading multinationals from OECD and emerging countries (Brazil, India, Russia, China, South Africa) that he created while at the OECD and a member of the Advisory Council of Aspen Institute France.
He started his career in academia as a tenured Research Rellow at Sciences Po Paris and Associate Professor at SAIS Johns Hopkins University. He has been an emerging markets economist at Indosuez (now Crédit Agricole Investment Banking). After he became chief economist for emerging markets at BBVA where he developed and led a group of 50 economists spread in 9 different countries. Later he has been the Chief Development Economist and Director of the OECD Development Centre, a policy tank of 95 staff focused on Africa, Asia and Latin American emerging markets. He has been the younger director ever named at the OECD during the past 50 years of the organization.
There he published the African Economic Outlook (AEO), conceived and launched new core products the Latin American Economic Outlook (LEO), the South East Asian Economic Outlook (SAEO) and the Global Development Outlook (GDO) on the Shifting Wealth of Nations. The OECD Development Centre experienced a profound transformation under Javier Santiso leadership, with nearly a tripling of the staff and a doubling of the Governing Board members, with most of the key emerging now full participants (Brazil, India, South Africa, Indonesia, VietNam, Egypt, Colombia, Chile, Turkey, Mexico, Poland, etc.).
Javier Santiso holds several degrees from Sciences Po, France, including a PhD, an MBA from HEC School of Management (France). He finished his doctoral studies at Oxford University where he has been also a research fellow of the St Antony's College. He followed Executive Programs at IESE Business School (Spain) and at Harvard University J.F. Kennedy School (United States). He was a visiting Professor at Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies. He gave lectures and presentations at Columbia University, Harvard University, Oxford University, London Business School, among others, and at annual conferences on emerging markets organized by The Economist (Brazil), Investec Asset Management (Turkey) or Khazanah (Malaysia).
Javier Santiso is the author of over 70 articles on emerging markets, venture capital and startuos. His most recent published books are: Latin America’s Political Economy of the Possible: Beyond Good Revolutionaries and Free Marketeers, Cambridge, Mass, MIT Press, 2007; and The Oxford Handbook of Latin American Political Economy, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 2012. He publishes regular Opinion Editorials in El País (Spain), Valor Económico (Brazil), and América Economía (Latin America).
Read more about Javier Santiso: Books