Luis Alberto Moreno

Luis Alberto Moreno Mejía (born 3 May 1953) is the 4th and current President of the Inter-American Development Bank.

Moreno was born in Philadelphia to a Colombian father attending medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. He obtained bachelor's degrees in Business Administration and Economics from Florida Atlantic University in 1975, and an MBA from the Thunderbird School of Global Management in 1977. He was Executive Producer of "TV Hoy", an award-winning news program, from January 1982 to September 1990. For his distinguished work in the field of journalism, he was awarded a Nieman Fellowship by Harvard University to undertake studies at that institution from September 1990 to June 1991.

From 1991 to 1994, during the administration of President César Gaviria, Moreno worked in the Colombian government in a variety of leadership positions. From December 1991 to July 1992, Moreno was the President of the Instituto de Fomento Industrial (IFI), the Colombian government's industrial finance corporation, and a holding company for many of the largest state enterprises in the country. In July 1992, he was named Minister of Economic Development. During his tenure, he modernized the Ministry and its subordinated agencies, and led the design and implementation of Colombia's industrial policy and competitiveness strategy. He served as senior advisor to the Luis Carlos Sarmiento Organization, the leading banking & financial group in Colombia with over US$10 billion in assets, from November 1994 to August 1997. He then served as the Andean region representative of WestSphere Capital, a private equity firm focusing on investment opportunities in Latin America, from August 1997 to July 1998.

Moreno was named Colombia's Ambassador to the United States in 1998, which required him to renounce his U.S. citizenship. As ambassador, Moreno oversaw a dramatic improvement in Colombian-U.S. relations during his tenure in Washington. His most notable achievement was the successful effort to build strong bipartisan support in the United States Congress for passage of more than US$4 billion in U.S. assistance programs for Colombia. He held that position until 2005.

Following his tenure as ambassador, Moreno was elected president of the Inter-American Development Bank during a special meeting of the Bank's Board of Governors at IDB headquarters in Washington, D.C. on 27 July 2005. He took office on 1 October 2005.