Sachs is widely recognized for bold and effective strategies addressing extreme poverty, climate change, international debt and financial crises, national economic reforms, and the control of pandemic diseases. He is Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he holds the rank of University Professor, the university’s highest academic rank. From 2002 to 2016, he directed the Earth Institute at Columbia. Sachs is President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Co-Chair of the Council of Engineers for the Energy Transition, academician of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences at the Vatican, Commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, and SDG Advocate for UN Secretary-General António Guterres. From 2001 to 2018, he served as Special Advisor to UN Secretaries-General Kofi Annan, Ban Ki-moon, and António Guterres. 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). He is the 2022 recipient of the Tang Prize in Sustainable Development and co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize. Twice named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders, Sachs has received 46 honorary doctorates, the French Legion of Honor, and the Order of the Cross from Estonia. Before joining Columbia, he 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, he earned his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard.