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José María Figueres Olsen served as President of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998, and was educated at the US Military Academy at West Point (BA 1979) and at Harvard University (MPA, 1991).
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From 1979 until 1984 he was General Manager of Fibers of Central America, and was Vice-President of the Railway Institute of Costa Rica (Incofer) from 1987 to 1988. He worked at the San Cristóbal Agroindustrial Group, serving as President from 1984 to 1988 and as Financial Consultant from 1990 to 1992. He was a Member of the Board of Advisors of the Digital Nationals consortium linked with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1998 and has served on the Board of Directors of Terremark Worldwide Inc. since 2000.
In the 1980s, President Figueres joined the Partido de Liberación Nacional (PLN), founded by his father, former President José Figueres Ferrer. He became Foreign Trade Minister for Oscar Arias´ Administration in 1988, served as Minister of Agriculture from 1988 to 1990, and was elected President of Costa Rica in 1994. While in office, he signed a Structural Adjustment Program with the IMF, privatized select state-owned companies and passed the Central Bank Law, which ended some historic monopolies of the public banking system. He strengthened the relationship of Costa Rica with the United States and signed the bilateral Free Trade Agreement with Mexico in 1994, making Costa Rica the first Central American State linked with the North America Free Trade Agreement. He also took part in negotiations with the United States for the creation of the Free Trade Area of the Americas. He continued Costa Rica´s participation in the Central American Common Market (MCCA) and in 1997 signed the Declaration of Managua to create a Central American Union.
President Figueres has been Special Representative of the United Nations Secretary General to the Information and Communication Technologies Advisory Group, now a task force, since 2000. He has been a member of many non-profit organizations such as the World Resources Institute, World Wildlife Fund, the Leadership in Environment and Development, FUNDES International, Stockholm Environment Institute and the Costa Rica Foundation for Sustainable Development, of which he is the founder. He became CEO of the World Economic Forum (WEC) in 2004. He has received numerous international honors, and is the author of many books, including The Costa Rican Banking System (1992), One Election, Two Different Countries (1993), The Future Begins Now (1993), On the Path to Sustainable Development (1995), and Testimony of a Time of Changes (1996). |
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