Rebeca Grynspan is a Costa Rican economist, currently serving as secretary-general of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).

Grynspan was vice president of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998 and later on secretary-general of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB). Concurrently, she was coordinating minister of the government’s social and economic sectors, housing and human settlements minister, and vice minister of finance. She has held many other public and advisory positions in Costa Rica, including the most recent, president of the board of the Mortgage and Housing Bank and coordinator of national economic adjustment, poverty reduction, and pension system reform. In addition, she was a professor at the University of Costa Rica’s School of Economics.

In the international realm, Grynspan has served as UN undersecretary general, associate administrator of the United Nations Development Program, and director of UNDP’s Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Grynspan studied economics and sociology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and holds a BS in economics from the University of Costa Rica as well as an MS in economics from Sussex University in Britain. Among her numerous publications on social and economic policy are The New-Old-Challenges of Social Policy (2002) and The Return of Political Economics and the Central American Challenges (2002).

Grynspan joined the Dialogue as a Member in 2008.