May 30, 2007
HP-430

Biography of Robert B. Zoellick
Nominee to be World Bank President

Mr. Zoellick, 53, has led and managed large public and private sector organizations, achieving a record of results during times of rapid change.  He motivates, builds loyalty and constituent support, and focuses on strategies and goals.  He has worked successfully with all regions of the world on a variety of economic, political, security, environmental, and humanitarian topics – developing coalitions internationally and bipartisan backing at home.  Since first traveling to Sub-Saharan Africa in the 1980s, he has worked with all regions of the continent on security, development, governance, trade, business and investment, health, environmental, and humanitarian causes.

Mr. Zoellick first studied economic development in 1973, when he learned the theoretical foundations of the subject, as well as the comparative experience of the ASEAN countries in the 1950s and 1960s.  Since then, he has had a strong and continuing interest in the literature, history, and practice of overcoming poverty, sustainable economic development, and growth in his own country and the diverse nations of the developing world.  Mr. Zoellick has had the opportunity to gain considerable experience with governance, management, policy, and performance of multilateral organizations, national governments, private businesses, financial markets, foundations, civil society groups, and non-profit organizations.  His background has enabled him to appreciate both the challenge of and need to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Mr. Zoellick is currently Vice Chairman, International of the Goldman Sachs Group, and a Managing Director and Chairman of Goldman Sachs' Board of International Advisors.  In addition to working with clients in Europe and the United States, Mr. Zoellick has had a strategic role in the firm's expansion of financial markets business and investment in China, Southeast Asia, India, the Middle East, Russia, and Latin America.  He serves in the Executive Office and on the firm's Risk and Business Practices Committees.  His work at Goldman Sachs since September 2006 has offered him both strategic and transactional insights on the cutting-edge developments in global and local financial markets.

In 2005-06, Mr. Zoellick served as Deputy Secretary of the U.S. State Department.  He was the Chief Operating Officer of the Department, which has 57,000 employees and embassies in 165 countries.  As Deputy, Mr. Zoellick had to be familiar with the full range of foreign policy matters in order to support the Secretary.  More particularly, he focused attention on economic, environmental, and transnational (eg. health) issues; Africa; China; Northeast and Southeast Asia; Latin America; and Mideast development topics.

Mr. Zoellick was deeply involved with the efforts to overcome the tragedies in Sudan.  He worked with multilateral, national, and private aid and humanitarian organizations on the reconstruction and development of the new Government of Southern Sudan, created through the Comprehensive Peace Accord of 2005.  During his many visits to camps all over Darfur, Zoellick worked closely with the African Union, UN organizations, partner countries, and NGOs to improve security and basic conditions, while looking to take on the crisis of development if peace could be restored; he worked in Khartoum and Abuja to press for a path to peace.  As point person on this issue, Mr. Zoellick also operated closely with the U.S. Congress and a vast range of civil society groups.  He was the first person to start to draw China constructively into the peace effort.

Mr. Zoellick also guided U.S. efforts in Aceh's reconstruction after the devastating tsunami.  In addition to his ties to Indonesian officials, he dealt with multilateral institutions, other national governments, and non-profit organizations.  Further in the area of development, Zoellick continued the multidimensional work he initiated as U.S. Trade Representative with the broader Middle East and Central America, and assisted with the regional multilateral development banks.

Mr. Zoellick initiated a Strategic Dialogue with China, covering foreign policy, economic, development, energy, security, and political topics.  His efforts led to a re-articulation of U.S. policy to encourage China to join others as "responsible stakeholders" in the international system.

From 2001 to January 2005, Mr. Zoellick served in the President's cabinet as U.S. Trade Representative.  He forged an activist approach to free trade at the global, regional, and bilateral levels, while securing support for open markets with the U.S. Congress and a broad coalition of domestic constituencies.  In doing so, Zoellick sought to combine national economic interests with others – in development; foreign policy; security; governance, transparency, and the rule of law; health; the environment; education; worker adjustment; and improved working conditions.  In the immediate aftermath of September 11th, Zoellick wrote a piece in the Washington Post emphasizing the importance of open markets, open societies, and development to counter the poverty and hopelessness that can become the breeding ground for terrorism.

In 2001, Mr. Zoellick labored with Ministers from almost 150 other economies to launch the Doha Development Agenda, while at the same time persuading the U.S. Congress to restore the President's lapsed trade negotiating authority and completing the accession of China and Taiwan to the WTO.  He then advanced proposals to eliminate all tariffs on manufacturing goods, and to eliminate agricultural export subsidies, slash domestic farm subsidies, and vastly improve access to agricultural markets.  Zoellick also worked with developing countries, pharmaceutical companies, and the full WTO membership to achieve accords on special access to medicines within the WTO's rules for intellectual property.  In 2004, he led the international effort to get the Doha negotiations back on track by assembling a more detailed framework to guide the next stage of commitments.  To do so, he worked closely with African cotton producers to incorporate their interests.  Zoellick continues to believe a Doha accord can and should be achieved for development and growth.

Mr. Zoellick also devised the plans to launch a Middle East Free Trade Area, the Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative, and other ventures to foster trade and development.  He pushed for free trade throughout the Americas, linked to aid, investment, business networks, and other supportive policies.  Zoellick enacted or completed FTAs with Jordan, Chile, Singapore, Morocco, Bahrain, the five countries of Central America and the Dominican Republic, Australia, and Viet Nam (a basic trade agreement).  He launched FTAs that were completed later with Oman, Peru, Colombia, and Panama.  And he began to create a special trade project with the five countries of the Southern African Customs Union.  Zoellick also completed or pushed for the accessions to the WTO of Cambodia, Saudi Arabia, Viet Nam, Russia, and others.

The comprehensive nature of the U.S. FTAs was designed to support governments advancing institutional, structural, and microeconomic reforms, including transparency, regulatory processes, customs and trade facilitation, rule of law, and anti-corruption – as well as to open markets with extensive transitions for developing economies.  The accords were also the first to include enforceable commitments on environment and labor, which Zoellick sought to supplement with aid, joint projects, and the involvement of civil society groups.  To support these initiatives, he appointed Assistant USTRs for Environment and Labor, and guided their new approaches.  He also worked with the leadership of the ILO and WHO to strengthen cooperation.

Mr. Zoellick was the first USTR to travel to Sub-Saharan Africa; in his final year, he visited for consultations three times.  Working to expand and fully utilize the African Growth & Opportunity Act (AGOA), Zoellick led U.S. delegations to the AGOA forums to encourage trade, investment, business growth, and supportive development policies.  To foster this effort, he built partnerships with regional African groups, such as COMESA, SADC, SACU, ECOWAS, and WAEMU, as well as with the African Development Bank and the AU. He also fostered African participation in the WTO processes, working through the lead Ministers for the LDC, ACP, and African groups.

Mr. Zoellick drew extensively from World Bank research in making the case for open trade.  He worked closely with the Inter-American Development Bank, the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Agency for International Development, OPIC, and others to improve trade capacity-building.  His efforts to combine trade and aid effectively prompted the U.S. Congress to appoint the U.S. Trade Representative to the board of the newly created U.S. Millennium Challenge Corporation, an innovative aid design that drew on the World Bank's research and standards for accountability across the pillars of development.

In addition to active outreach with business and farm groups, Zoellick sought the advice and assistance of environmental, labor, and civil society groups, including through formal advisory committees.  He followed a similar approach abroad, meeting with non-governmental groups – from labor unions, indigenous peoples' organizations, women's empowerment associations, and environmental groups to micro-lenders, small businesspeople, and university students, in order to listen, learn, and discuss the challenges and opportunities of globalization.

After leaving government service, Mr. Zoellick met with the World Bank staff at their request to discuss trade policy, negotiations, and development.

From 1993 to 1997, Mr. Zoellick served as an Executive Vice President of Fannie Mae, the large housing finance corporation.  He supervised the affordable housing business, as well as offices dealing with legal, regulatory, government and industry relations, and international services.  The international services staff worked with governments in Latin America, Asia, and Russia seeking to build mortgage markets.

Zoellick's affordable housing work at Fannie Mae involved establishing business ties with Governors, Mayors, other state and local officials, low income housing groups, Native American organizations, non-profits, as well as with multifamily housing developers, realtors, homebuilders, and a wide range of financial providers.  He managed affordable housing staffs in regional and state or city partnership offices across the country.  His corporate activities also involved dealing with investors, complex asset-liability and credit risk management, and the global capital markets.  (During an earlier period at Fannie Mae, from 1983-1985, Zoellick served as Vice President and Assistant to the Chairman and CEO while the company executed a business turnaround strategy after the surge of high interest rates exposed its asset-liability mismatch).

Following Fannie Mae, Zoellick served for a year as the Olin Visiting Professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, as a Senior Advisor to Goldman Sachs, as a Research Scholar at the Belfer Center at Harvard University, and on three corporate boards (Alliance Capital, Said Holdings, and Jones Intercable).  During the 1990s, he also served on many non-profit boards, among them the Council on Foreign Relations, the European Institute, the American Council on Germany, the American Institute of Contemporary German Studies, the German Marshall Fund of the U.S., the National Bureau of Asian Research, the Overseas Development Council, and the Advisory Councils of the World Wildlife Fund and the Institute of International Economics. 

From 1985 to 1993, Mr. Zoellick served with Secretary James A. Baker, III at the Treasury Department (from Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions Policy to Counselor to the Secretary); State Department (Undersecretary of State for Economic and Agricultural Affairs as well as Counselor of the Department with Undersecretary rank); and briefly Deputy Chief of Staff at the White House and Assistant to the President.  He was the "Sherpa" to the President for the preparation of the Economic Summits in 1991-92.

In his years at the Treasury Department, Zoellick was deeply involved with the recovery from the debt crises of the 1980s.  This period was his first substantial professional experience with the World Bank, IMF, and regional banks – a time of emphasis on structural reforms and, with the IMF, an exploration of international surveillance and coordination.  The U.S. Treasury also urged the World Bank to incorporate environmental assessments in its lending programs during this period.

As an Undersecretary of State (and as Alternate Governor to the World Bank and regional banks), Zoellick worked with the International Financial Institutions in dealing with the post-Communist "Economies in Transition," debt forgiveness, and support for investment.  This was also the period when donors and lenders started to focus more attention on good governance practices to help lay a foundation for sound development and growth.

In related economic activities, Zoellick was the lead State Department official in the NAFTA and Uruguay Round (GATT) negotiations, contributing to the "Blair House" agreement on agriculture, a critical breakthrough for the Uruguay Round.  He was one of the founding architects of APEC in 1989, a designer of the Enterprise for the Americas Initiative, and participated in the founding of the EBRD.  At the Treasury Department, he supported Secretary Baker in the completion of the U.S.- Canada FTA.

In his capacity overseeing the Office of Oceans, Environment, and Science at the State Department, Zoellick worked with EPA Administrator Bill Reilly to guide the U.S. negotiations in achieving the Global Climate Change Framework Agreement of 1992.  He achieved bans on driftnet fishing and elephant ivory sales; helped conclude the long-term moratorium for Antarctic development; incorporated environmental funds into arrangements to forgive official debt in Latin America, Africa, and Central and Eastern Europe; sought to strengthen CITES enforcement; and guided negotiations for the creation of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) at the World Bank.  While at the Treasury Department, working in concert with the Environment and Science staff at the Smithsonian Institution, he initiated the change in tax policy that first created the basis for private debt-for-nature swaps.

Mr. Zoellick was also a principal actor on a wide range of political-security issues that encouraged and eased the end of the Cold War.  He led the U.S. delegation in the Two-plus-Four negotiations for German unification.  He actively participated in the diplomacy and negotiations for the ending of the conflicts in Central America from 1989-92; was a strategist for the transformation of NATO and new institutional links between the U.S. and the changing institutions of the EU; helped guide landmark arms reduction accords with the then-Soviet Union (Conventional Forces, Strategic Arms, and Chemical Weapons); and played a key role assisting the new democracies of Central and Eastern Europe.

On the domestic financial front at the Treasury Department, Zoellick helped design and enact the legislation restructuring the Farm Credit System, played a key support role during and after the market crash of October 1987, and fought for the first efforts to clean up and recapitalize the S&L industry.  Starting during this period, and continuing through his later government service, Zoellick developed close working relations with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors and staff.

Mr. Zoellick graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore College in 1975.  He earned a J.D. magna cum laude from the Harvard Law School and a MPP (focusing on public management and international issues, especially economics) from the Kennedy School of Government in 1981. He lived in Hong Kong on a fellowship in 1980.

Zoellick has been privileged to receive a number of awards, including: the Knight Commanders Cross from Germany for his work on unification; the Alexander Hamilton and Distinguished Service Awards, the highest honors of the Department of Treasury and State, respectively; the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service; and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from St. Joseph's College in Rensselaer, Indiana.

He now serves on the Board of the International Republican Institute, a part of the National Endowment for Democracy created by the U.S. Congress.  He also was appointed to the Secretary of Defense's Policy Board.

 Mr. Zoellick grew up in Naperville, Illinois.