He is widely recognized for bold and effective strategies to address complex challenges including debt crises, hyperinflations, the transition from central planning to market economies, the control of AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, the escape from extreme poverty, and the battle against human-induced climate change.
Sachs serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University,
where he holds the rank of University Professor, the university’s highest academic rank. Sachs
held the position of Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University from 2002 to 2016.

He is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a commissioner of the UN
Broadband Commission for Development, and an SDG Advocate for UN Secretary General
Antonio Guterres. From 2001-18, Sachs served as Special Advisor to UN Secretaries-General
Kofi Annan (2001-7), Ban Ki-moon (2008-16), and António Guterres (2017-18).
Sachs has authored and edited numerous books, including three New York Times bestsellers: The
End of Poverty (2005), Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008), and The
Price of Civilization (2011).

Sachs was the co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize, the leading global prize for
environmental leadership. He was twice named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential
world leaders and has received 35 honorary degrees. The New York Times called Sachs
“probably the most important economist in the world,” and Time magazine called Sachs “the
world’s best-known economist.” A survey by The Economist ranked Sachs as among the three
most influential living economists.

Prior to joining Columbia, Sachs spent over twenty years as a professor at Harvard University,
most recently as the Galen L. Stone Professor of International Trade. A native of Detroit,
Michigan, Sachs received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard.