Jorge Heine

Background

A native of Santiago, Chile, Jorge Heine is a lawyer and political scientist. After completing law school at the University of Chile, he studied at the University of York, UK (B. Phil., Modern Political Analysis) and Stanford, California (M.A. and Ph.D.). Jorge’s interest in the interface between academia and public policy arose at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., where he was the deputy director of the Latin American Program in the early 1980s. There, he developed a passion for public policy think tanks and has worked with them in various capacities for 30 years, in Latin America, North America, Europe, Africa and Asia.

Jorge went on to hold prominent academic positions in Europe and Latin America — including a visiting fellowship at St. Antony’s College at Oxford University, UK — before returning to Santiago in 1989. Back in Chile, Jorge became increasingly interested in diplomacy and public service, and was appointed deputy minister of defence in 1993 and ambassador to South Africa in 1994. He was the first ambassador to present credentials to President Nelson Mandela, and collaborated with Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu in the establishment of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In 1999, Jorge became minister of national assets in the Chilean government. He was later appointed the Chilean ambassador to India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh in 2003, a position he held until joining CIGI as a distinguished fellow in 2007.

At CIGI, he has been involved in the Complex Diplomacy, Haiti’s Governance Challenges and International Community research projects, and co-edited three major volumes, Fixing Haiti: MINUSTAH and Beyond, The Dark Side of Globalization and Which Way Latin America? Hemispheric Politics Meets Globalization. As a CIGI chair, Jorge also runs the International Governance Speakers Series, which brings leading global experts to Waterloo to discuss international affairs.

Jorge has also served as vice president of the International Political Science Association (2006–2009), and was listed as one of the top 10 most influential Hispanic Canadians in 2010. He serves on the Strategic Advisory Group of the UNDP-Latin America. He has been the Winegard visiting lecturer in international development at the University of Guelph, and the Hansen-Hostler lecturer at California State University, San Diego, as well as a public policy scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in the summer of 2011.

Jorge lives in Waterloo with his wife Norma. He regularly travels to India, where he is involved in a number of research projects and writes for The Hindu, and to Chile, where he has children and grandchildren. He is fluent in Spanish, English, German and French.