Leadership
Pablo J. FarÃas
Vice PresidentPablo Farías has served as vice president of the foundation's Economic Opportunity and Assets program since 2003. He oversees worldwide grant making focused on expanding opportunities and providing fair and equitable ways for all people to earn a decent living and build economic resources. Pablo is also in charge of the foundation's regional programming in China, Indonesia, and India and Sri Lanka.
His portfolio also supports advancing a vision of smart, regional development that builds strong and equitable communities, and contributing to sustainable development by promoting greater access and rights to natural resources among the rural poor.
Pablo joined the Ford Foundation in 1998 and served as representative for Mexico and Central America until being named vice president. Previously, he was the founding director general of the College of the Southern Border in Chiapas, Mexico, a research institute focused on the challenges of poverty alleviation, sustainable development in tropical rural areas and population dynamics in Mexico's southern border region. He also served on the board of Mexico's National Council on Science and Technology and the national advisory councils on sustainable development and social development.
He began his career working on community health concerns among Latino immigrants in the East Cambridge and Jamaica Plain areas of Boston. He later worked in social medicine and mental health in the refugee camps along the Mexico-Guatemala border and helped establish the Comitan Center for Health Research, an organization focused on reproductive health, community mental health and local development in rural areas.
A native of Monterrey, Mexico, Pablo studied medicine at the University of Monterrey and trained in psychiatry and medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School and the Cambridge Hospital. He was also a Dupont-Warren research fellow and lecturer in social medicine at Harvard Medical School.
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