Paul Collier to Join OEF’s Board of Directors

The One Earth Future foundation is honored to announce that esteemed British economist Paul Collier will join our board of directors in December 2023. His decades of expertise have helped shape how the development community thinks about and addresses the challenges facing poor countries. His singular knowledge and perspective will further OEF’s work to make sustainable peace possible.

Collier is a leading figure in development economics and has authored such foundational works as The Bottom Billion, Plundered Planet, and Greed Is Deed. His current research focuses on what leads to civil wars and their ramifications, the impact of foreign aid, urbanization in low-income countries, private investment in African infrastructure, low-income countries’ struggle to cement resilient democracies, and the use of natural resources in high-income countries.

“I couldn’t be more thrilled to have Paul join OEF’s Board of Directors,” said Jon Bellish, One Earth Future’s Executive Director. “His work on the links between development and conflict, as well as his uncompromising dedication to sustainable solutions in left-behind places, make him an invaluable asset to the organization.”

Collier is a Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government and Director of the International Growth Centre. He is also a Professorial Fellow Emeritus of St. Antony's College at Oxford a Professeur invité at Sciences Po. In addition to his academic work, he writes regularly for periodicals, including the New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. He presented a popular TED talk and is a frequent media commentator on development, conflict, and reconstruction issues. Collier has received numerous awards for his work, including the Lionel Gelber Prize, the Arthur Ross Prize from the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Corine Prize. He is a 2014 Commander of the Order of the British Empire and a Fellow of the British Academy. 

OEF is an operating foundation that is committed to designing integrated solutions for the hardest to reach places and toughest conflicts in the world. Unless we gain traction on the problems that today seem intractable, the risk of armed conflict will continue to rise for all 8 billion people on our one earth.