Jeffrey D. Sachs is a world-renowned economics professor, bestselling author, innovative educator, and global leader in sustainable development. He is widely recognized for bold and effective strategies to address complex challenges including debt crises, hyperinflations, the transition from central planning to market economies, the control of AIDS, malaria, and other diseases, the escape from extreme poverty, and the battle against human-induced climate change.

He is Director of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network, a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development, and an SDG Advocate for UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. From 2001-2018, Sachs served as Special Advisor to the UN Secretary General, for Kofi Annan(2001-2017), Ban Ki-moon (2008-2016), and Antonio Guterres (2017-18).

Professor Sachs was the co-recipient of the 2015 Blue Planet Prize, the leading global prize for environmental leadership. He was twice named among Time magazine’s 100 most influential world leaders and has received 28 honorary degrees. The New York Times called Sachs “probably the most important economist in the world,” and Time magazine called Sachs “the world’s best-known economist.” A survey by The Economist ranked Sachs as among the three most influential living economists.

Professor Sachs serves as the Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He is University Professor at Columbia University, the university’s highest academic rank. Sachs was Director of the Earth Institute from 2002 to 2016.

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). Other books include To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace (2013), The Age of Sustainable Development (2015), Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair & Sustainable (2017), and most recently A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism (2018).

Prior to joining Columbia, Sachs 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, Sachs received his B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. degrees at Harvard.

  • Globalization.

  • Fighting Poverty.

  • Health and Well-being.

  • Economic and Sustainable Development.

Common Wealth

We are running up against the realities of a crowded planet and they are upending many of our basic assumptions about economic life. Prof. Sachs challenges us to stabilize our global population, work toward prosperity for all, and develop new economic models that are environmentally sustainable over the long term.

Though we are currently headed toward a worldwide collapse of unprecedented severity, Prof. Sachs insists that these are not unattainable utopian goals. This presentation point the way toward a prosperous and sustainable future through efforts that are completely within our reach.

The End of Poverty

Combining brilliant analysis with vivid stories from his own work around the world, Prof. Sachs explains why wealth across the globe has diverged so much and offers an integrated set of solutions to the problems that hold societies back. An elegant work of profound moral and intellectual vision that grows out of unprecedented real-world experience, it makes clear how solvable the world's problems are.