Luis Ubiñas has had a career spanning business, government and the nonprofit sector. He has served as President of the Ford Foundation, a senior partner at McKinsey & Company and an Obama-era appointee to both the Export-Import Bank and the International Trade Commission. Over the last several years, he has been an investor, advisor and board member. During the 2020 Presidential campaign Luis co-chaired the Biden economic policy committee.
Luis is currently Chair of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation. He stepped down last fall as President of the Board of Trustees of the Pan American Development Foundation, which invests over $95 million per year in development projects in Central and South America and the Caribbean. He led PADF as it expanded its work in Puerto Rico, Mexico and Central America. Luis also serves on several multilateral, governmental and nonprofit boards and advisory committees, including the Advisory Board of the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships and the New York Public Library, where he serves as Chair of the Finance Committee and on the Executive Committee. In the private sector, Luis is Lead Director at Electronic Arts, and serves on the boards of ATT, the telecommunications and technology company, and Tanger, the publically traded REIT. He also invests in and advises a number of private and pre-IPO companies.
Luis served as President of the Ford Foundation from 2008 through 2013. The Foundation is the second largest in the United States, with an endowment over $15 billion. It operates globally, with offices in Asia, Africa, and Central and South America. While at the Foundation, he led a broad-based restructuring of the organization, including strategic resetting of its strategies and operating programs, reinvestment of over 80% of the endowment, and rebuilding facilities, systems and the cost base. Prior to Ford, Luis was a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, leading the firm’s media practice on the West Coast. He served technology, telecommunications and media companies, working with them to develop and implement strategies and improve operations. Much of his work focused on the opportunities and challenges represented by the global growth of broadband and wireless technologies.
Luis is a graduate of Harvard College, magna cum laude in government, with a Certificate in Latin American Studies; he was named a Truman Scholar. He is a graduate of Harvard Business School, with highest honors, a Baker Scholar. Luis is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has held top-secret national security clearance. Luis has published extensively, including articles and opinion pieces in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Fortune Magazine, and a range of other publications in the United States and abroad.
Luis and his wife, Deborah Tolman, the feminist scholar, have two sons, Max and Ben.
