Lorenzo Escondeur is IDB Jamaica’s new Chief of Operations

Therese Turner-Jones, IDB Jamaica’s Country Representative and General Manager of the Caribbean Country Group is pleased to welcome Lorenzo Escondeur, IDB Jamaica’s new Chief of Operations with effect from September 1. A national of Uruguay, Lorenzo has been a member of the Inter-American Development Bank team for the past 21 years.

Lorenzo previously served as an Operations Advisor to the Vice President for Sectors and Knowledge, providing strategic and expert technical advice in highly complex business topics. He led the development and improvement of several processes, policies, and systems, based on modern and innovative approaches to improve project execution and better serve clients. He also gained a wealth of experience while working in key operations roles at the Institutional Capacity and Finance Department, Development Effectiveness Department, the Regional Department for Andean and Caribbean Countries as well as the Country Office in Uruguay.

Lorenzo holds a Master’s degree in Management Information Systems Technology from The George Washington University and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Universidad de la Empresa of Uruguay.

He opines that COVID-19 has put the world and, especially the Caribbean, to the test and that the pandemic has become the great natural accelerator of an imperative digital transformation. “Jamaica has a great opportunity to advance in this transformation, for example by investing and focusing on the expansion of broadband as the necessary foundation for the development of the public and private sectors. From this will arise new business models, new ways of managing natural resources, new models of education for our children, among many other innovations.”

Focusing on digitization and connectivity will also allow countries to accelerate the use of the technologies of the 4th Industrial Revolution (Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Augmented Reality, Blockchain, and others), that are already generating profound transformations in the lives of people, organizations, societies and markets. These new technologies will allow government and businesses to generate new interactions, new types of data, new behaviors, new opportunities, and new services and products.

“I will be an advocate to support, accompany and motivate the public and private sector as well as the Jamaican people to bring to the table their creativity and their collective intelligence to get the most out of this great digital revolution and the opportunities presented by the pandemic. My goal is to contribute to generate a new mindset that fosters collaboration, co-creation, diversity and puts people at the center of any attempt to come with better and different solutions for development challenges.”