Board of Directors

Pablo Farias trained in medicine, psychiatry and medical anthropology prior to beginning his work in 1988 developing mental health resources in the refugee camps in the border of Mexico and Guatemala. He served as a consulting psychiatrist in Mexico’s Ministry of Health, working in the Comitan General Hospital in the state of Chiapas, Mexico. In 1992 he was appointed as Director General of the Center for Ecological Research of the Southeast and charged in 1994 with its transformation into the College of the Southern Border (ECOSUR). He served in ECOSUR until 1998, organizing its graduate training programs, establishment of research units in the states of Quintana Roo, Campeche and Tabasco and consolidation of its two research campuses in Chiapas. In 1998, Pablo joined the Ford Foundation as its Representative for Mexico and Central America. From 2003 until 2013 he continued his work for the Ford Foundation in New York City, serving as vice-president for the Economic Opportunity program and overseeing the work of the foundation in its offices in India, China and Indonesia. He retired from the Ford Foundation in 2013 to return to his original work in mental health, collaborating with the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School in the development of a global mental health program. Throughout his career, Pablo has supported the development of non-profit organizations that focus on the challenges of sustainable development and advance the role of culture and health in society.