Rebeca Grynspan is the United Nations Assistant Secretary General and UNDP assistant administrator and regional director of the Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean. She is in charge of 24 UNDP offices and leads over 800 professionals. Previously, she was director of the subregional headquarters in Mexico of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). She is a member of the Task Force I on poverty and economic development under the UN Millennium Project headed by Jeffrey Sachs and a member of the UN High Level Panel on Financing for Development chaired by Ernesto Zedillo. Grynspan was vice president of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998, as well as coordinating minister of the government’s social and economic sectors, and housing and human settlements ministries. She has held many other public and advisory positions in Costa Rica, including president of the board of the Mortgage and Housing Bank, and coordinator of national poverty reduction strategy and pension system reform. In addition, she was a professor at the University of Costa Rica’s School of Economics. She has served on the boards of the Inter-American Development Bank’s Support to Women’s Leadership and Representation Program, the Central America Program, and the International Food Policy Research Institute. Grynspan studied economics and sociology in the Jerusalem Hebrew University, and holds a B.S. in economics from the University of Costa Rica, as well as an M.S. in economics from Sussex University, U.K. Recent publications include Economic and Social Tendencies in Latin America: Towards an Agenda with Gender Perspective (2003), “The New-Old? Challenges of Social Policy” in Social Management in Latin America: Innovating Focus and Experiences (Isabel Licha, ed., 2002), and Informal Citizens: Poverty, Informality, and Social Exclusion in Latin America (2002).