He is a world-renowned economist. He is currently director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia and the President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He also co-founded the Millennium Promise Alliance to alleviate poverty by 2030, and a founder of the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project.

Sachs was also a University Professor at Columbia University, and former director of its Earth Institute (2002-2016).  And he served as an advisor to UN Secretary-Generals Antonio Guterres, Ban Ki-Moon, and Kofi Annan; to Pope Francis and John Paul II on their encyclicals; and to heads of state of many countries for their economic development.

He is author or co-author of many books, including;

• The End of Poverty (2005),
• Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet (2008),
• World Happiness Report (2010, with two others),
• The Price of Civilization: Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity (2011),
• To Move the World: JFK’s Quest for Peace (2013; on President Kennedy’s June 1963 “Peace Speech”),
• The Age of Sustainable Development (2015, Foreword by Ban Ki-Moon; on sustainable development as the central concept of our age and the SDGs),
• Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable (2017).

Sachs has received 21 honorary degrees and many awards, such as the Blue Planet Prize (2015), World Sustainability Award (2017), and Boris Mints Institute Prize (2017).