José Antonio Meade Kuribreña

José Antonio Meade Kuribreña

PRI-PVEM-PANAL

Party Affiliation: PRI-PVEM-PANAL

Born: Mexico City, 1969

 

José Antonio Meade Kuribreña comes from a politically active family of Irish and Lebanese descent. His father is Dionisio Meade, a long-time PRI player who served as representative for this party between 1997 and 2000. His great-grandfather was Daniel Kuri Breña, a founding member of PAN. Meade Kuribreña holds degrees in economy and law from ITAM and UNAM, respectively. He also holds a Ph.D. in economy from the University of Yale.

 

Meade started his career working for Comisión Nacional de Seguros y Finanzas (CNSF) in 1991. He later moved to Comisión Nacional del Sistema de Ahorro para el Retiro (CONSAR) in 1997. His public service career also includes positions at IPAB (1999-2000), his tenure as Director General for banking and savings at the Ministry of Finance (2000-2002), and a posting as Director General of Banco Nacional de Crédito Rural (BANRURAL) from 2002 to 2006. He has been a lecturer in economics at ITAM and has published different papers in the field. During Felipe Calderón’s administration, Meade was appointed Minister of Energy in January 2011 and then Finance Minister in September 2011.

 

After PRIs return to power, Enrique Peña Nieto appointed him Foreign Affairs Minister in December 2012, being the only Calderón’s minister selected to Nieto’s cabinet. While holding this position he was chosen as one of the world’s 500 most influential people by Foreign Policy magazine. In August 2015, he was moved to the top position at the Ministry for Social Development, where he coordinated the National Inclusion Strategy to fight poverty in Mexico. In September 2016, Meade was appointed Minister of Finance, earning the record for holding the most ministerial positions (five).

 

Among his campaign proposals are a quadrupling of the number of full-time schools to a total 100,000; safeguarding the integrity and development of women; universal undergraduate training coverage; a MX$3 billion investment in healthcare; raising wages and benefits for the military to increase security; and to extirpate corruption from Mexican politics.