Iván Duque

Biography

Iván Duque, Former President of Colombia, was the inaugural Emerging Markets Institute Distinguished Fellow from 2023-2025.

Iván Duque served as the youngest-ever president of Colombia from 2018 to 2022. Since then, he has been a tireless and inventive champion for the environment and for personal agency, writing numerous books, speaking around the world, and forming partnerships, including with Cornell’s Emerging Markets Institute. His work mixes pragmatism with inspiration, advocating for expert stewardship of financial and natural resources via verifiable information and strong ethics.

He came to Cornell to speak with venerable Professor Miguel Gómez. Together they discussed humanism and society and the relationship between leadership and ethics. He coined the term “biodivercitizens” to describe our personal responsibility to make conscious choices in our consumption and stressed that higher education must be the fearless protector of knowledge.