The Georgetown Americas Institute was pleased to welcome Juan Carlos Echeverry, former minister of finance of Colombia and former president of Ecopetrol (2015-2017), to talk about his book Salvar a Ecopetrol (Saving Ecopetrol, 2023). Ecopetrol is Colombia’s state-owned oil company and the largest conglomerate in the country. It engages in the exploration, development, and production of crude oil and natural gas, and its operations include exploration and production, transportation and logistics, and refining and petrochemicals. Echeverry assumed the presidency in April 2015 during historically low oil prices. The book narrates his efforts to navigate a challenging time for the industry while trying to modernize its operations and improve efficiency. The presentation was moderated by Denisse Yanovich, GAI managing director.
This event was livestreamed to the GAI YouTube channel.
Featuring
Juan Carlos Echeverry served from 2010 to 2012 as the minister of finance and public credit of the Republic of Colombia. He has received several international awards including Minister of Finance of the Americas (The Banker Global Financial Intelligence), Best Minister of the Year (America Economia), and Minister of Finance of the Year of the Americas (Emerging Markets). Prior to his most recent ministerial assignment, he led the development and strategy of economic programs during the presidential campaign of President Juan Manuel Santos and was minister of economic planning from 2000 to 2002. Echeverry was an advisor for international investment banks through the firm Global Source Partners in New York, and he is currently the president of Econcept, a financial consulting firm in Bogotá. He has been a consultant for the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. He was a member of the economic team responsible for the macroeconomic stabilization of Colombia from 1998 to 2002 as the head of macroeconomic analysis at the Ministry of Economic Planning, where he later took office as minister. He is also currently an associate professor of economics at University of the Andes.
Denisse Yanovich is the managing director of the Georgetown Americas Institute. Prior to joining Georgetown she was the deputy to the president at the Inter-American Dialogue, a leading think tank on Latin America. She also worked at the Embassy of Colombia in Washington, managing their Public Diplomacy program, and Fedesarrollo, an economic policy think tank in Colombia, as a research associate. Yanovich holds a B.S. and M.A. in economics from Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá and M.A. in art history from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University College, London.