Juan José Daboub — Managing Director of the World Bank (2006-2010)

Dr. Juan José Daboub is the former Managing Director of the World Bank (2006-2010), where he was in charge of operations in 110 countries Africa, the Middle East, East Asia and Latin America. He was also responsible for the oversight of the Human Development and Sustainable Development Networks, the Information Systems Group, the World Bank Institute, the Department of Institutional Integrity and the Arab World Initiative.

Juan José Daboub —Minister of Finance, El Salvador

Prior to the World Bank, Dr. Daboub joined with El Salvador’s President Francisco Flores to develop the non-profit organization America Libre Institute. As leader of that organization, Dr. Daboub implemented proven public policies to promote liberty, stability and growth throughout Latin America. From 1999 to 2004, Dr. Daboub served concurrently as El Salvador’s Minister of Finance and as Chief of Staff to President Flores. In these high profile dual roles, Dr. Daboub helped to navigate his native country through several regional economic challenges including securing and sustaining El Salvador’s investment grade rating, “dollarizing” the economy, and completing a Free Trade Agreement with the United States. During this period, he also oversaw the emergency reconstruction of El Salvador after two major earthquakes in 2001. 

Juan José Daboub —CEO of the Global Adaptation Institute and Professor at Princeton

Today, Dr. Daboub is the founding CEO of the Global Adaptation Institute.  He also teaches at Princeton University. Dr. Daboub holds a Bachelors of Science, Masters of Science and a PhD in Industrial Engineering from North Carolina State University. He is married with four children.

• Juan José Daboub on El Salvador's Success Story

  For the private sector to invest in a country, there needs to be security, rule of law, respect for property rights, intellectual rights, there needs to be the minimum level of productivity necessary for those investments to take place. And this is really the story behind the success of El Salvador. Between 1989 and 2004, El Salvador was able to become the second freest economy in Latin America...  El Salvador was able to consistently and systematically remove obstacles for people to be able to take destiny into their own hands.

• Juan José Daboub on Development in Ireland vs. Nicaragua

  About a hundred years ago, Ireland and Nicaragua had exactly the same levels of development: the same number of cows, the same number of hospital beds, the same number of teachers, the same number of houses and roads to take products out to the market. Why, fifty or sixty years later, was Ireland exponentially growing in a totally different path than Nicaragua was? I believe that economic freedom had a lot to do with that. I believe that the fact that people were empowered and you didn’t let the politicians capture the establishment and capture the decisions of the country was what made an important difference... You open up the gates of Ireland, you open up the economy, and you didn’t go through all of the gymnastics that Nicaragua went in the last one hundred years where they had gone from one sort of dictator to another sort of dictator and have not let the people actually have the opportunity to succeed. You still have elites in the political arena, the private sector, and in the unions that are aphyxiating the possibilities of people to actually do what in Ireland they were able to do and accomplish.

• Juan José Daboub on The Benefits of Economic Freedom

  The reason you want to open up the economy, the reason you want to have fiscal responsibility, the reason you want to have microeconomic stability, the reason you want to liberalize trade, the reason you want to privatize companies, is so that people have the opportunity of taking destiny into their owns hands so that you can reduce poverty by creating opportunities. Because the only other option, which has failed time and time again, is the one of the handout, which is the one of the government providing everything for you; that doesn’t work. It doesn’t work in real life; it doesn’t work on paper. It has never worked. Every country that has tried it is suffering and is suffering significantly.

• Juan José Daboub on Foreign Aid to Haiti

  Haiti has gone through all forms of governments you can think of: left, right, up, down, colony to Spain, colony to France, military intervention of the US,... and it has been one of the largest recipients of aid. Yet the donors continue to think that that’s the main way out and it is not. In March of this year, the private sector of Haiti started to say, 'It is not about aid. It is about trade. It is about creating job opportunities. It is about opening markets. So they are starting to get it.