Leonardo Martinez Diaz

Leonardo Martinez-Diaz (born October 28, 1976) is Global Director of the Sustainable Finance Center at the World Resources Institute in Washington, DC. Previously, he was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy and Environment in the United States Department of the Treasury. He also served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Western Hemisphere at the United States Department of the Treasury and Director of the Office of Policy in the United States Agency for International Development.

Before entering government, he was Fellow and Deputy Director of the Global Economy and Development Program at the Brookings Institution. He also served as Deputy Director of Brookings’ Partnership for the Americas Commission, as an Economist at the International Monetary Fund, and as Director of the High-Level Commission on the Modernization of World Bank Group Governance.

Before joining Brookings, Martinez-Diaz was Research Associate with the Global Economic Governance Program at Oxford University, where he focused on the politics of banking reform in developing countries and the role of the IMF in financial crisis-management. Mr. Martinez-Diaz, a Luce Fellow in Indonesia, worked as an academic and consultant. His analysis on Indonesia was published by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Oxford Analytica, the International Herald Tribune, and The Economist.

Martinez-Diaz is author of Globalizing in Hard Times: the Politics of Banking-Sector Opening in the Emerging World (Cornell, 2009). He is co-editor with Ngaire Woods of Networks of Influence? Developing Countries in a Networked Global Order (Oxford, 2009), of Brazil as an Economic Superpower? Understanding Brazil’s Changing Role in the Global Economy with Global Economy and Development Director Lael Brainard (Brookings, 2009), and of Studies of IMF Governance: A Compendium with Ruben Lamdany (IMF, 2009).

Martinez-Diaz specialized in International Political Economy, receiving a M.Phil degree in 2001 and D.Phil in 2007 from Magdalen College, Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar.

He graduated with honors from Northwestern University in 1999 with degrees in Economics and Political Science and was a 1998 Truman Scholar.