Juan Carlos Salazar
Principal Consultant
Offices: Colombia
Email: juan.salazar@technopolis-group.com
Juan Carlos is a principal consultant and former Director of Technopolis Group Colombia. He has more than 30 years of experience in analysing, designing, implementing and evaluating public policies for socio-economic development in Latin America and the Caribbean. His experience covers the fields of science, technology and innovation, competitiveness and productivity, private sector development, regional development, sustainable development and green growth for climate change mitigation and adaptation.
In the initiatives he has participated in, in addition to assuming technical and operational leadership, he has coordinated various social actors such as national and regional governments, multilateral and bilateral agencies, NGOs, universities, research centres and consulting firms. He has served public sector institutions in Colombia, Peru, Chile, Ecuador and Mexico; multilateral organisations: World Bank, IDB, CAF, UNDP, IICA, UNESCO and European Commission, Caribbean Development Bank and the CARICOM Secretariat; and bilateral donors such as USAID, NORAD, NDF, British Council and SECO.
Her most relevant recent experience includes the management of projects such as a Study on gender gaps in the knowledge-based services sector for Colombia Productiva (ongoing), the design of a regional ecosystem model for dynamic entrepreneurship and innovation for Antofagasta (Chile), the Design of Pilot instrument to support the development of public goods that impact on the competitiveness of clusters, for the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Tourism of Colombia and Swisscontact; and was co-director of the study for the design of a prospective methodology that strengthened public policy formulation capacities in Colombia, for the DNP and Swisscontact.
In evaluation, he is director of the Retrospective Evaluation of the “climate” public policy loans granted by the AFD to the Republic of Colombia between 2015 and 2022 (ongoing); the evaluation of the ProAdapt Facility, financed by the IDB and the NDF. He also recently led the evaluation of the CARICOM Development Fund and participated in the Technopolis team that supported the Office of Evaluation and Oversight (OVE) in the IDB Lab evaluation, which covered countries in Latin America and the Caribbean.
He was the project manager of the final evaluation of the “Innovation for Competitiveness (FINCyT 2)” programme, which was implemented under loan contract 2693/OC-PE between the Republic of Peru and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) (2012-2019). Other experience includes having been manager of credit operations with the IDB and the World Bank (2011-2013), executed by COLCIENCIAS (today Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation) for the strengthening of the National System of Science, Technology and Innovation and Director of Science and Technology of the DNP (2000-2004).
Juan Carlos has a multidisciplinary academic background covering various areas related to social, economic and environmental development, especially in the case of developing countries in the context of the knowledge economy. He is a civil engineer with an MSc in Development Studies (LSE, 1997) and an MBA (Universidad de los Andes, 2003). He is fluent in Spanish (mother tongue) and English.
