Zedillo attended public school and the School of Economics at the National Polytechnic Institute in Mexico, before heading to Yale for his doctorate in economics. He then spent ten years in economic posts in the Mexican government, eventually serving as the Secretary of Economic Programming and the Budget from 1988 to 1992.

For a year he was secretary of education, during which time he pushed through reforms of Mexico’s basic education system.

In 1993 he left his post to lead the presidential campaign of PRI candidate Louis Donaldo Colosio and took over as candidate when Colosio was assassinated in March of 1994. Zedillo assumed the presidency in December of 1994 and ran what Professor Coatsworth called a “transparent government.”

Zedillo lost to current President Vincente Fox in the 2000 election. He worked with the United Nations before returning to Yale in 2001. He became director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization in September 2002.

Zedillo will be the first Latin American commencement day speaker since Oscar Arias, former president of Costa Rica, spoke in 1988.