David Calderón

David is co-founder and current Executive President of Mexicanos Primero, a citizens’ initiative for public policy advocacy and social co-responsibility in education. He was a community instructor in indigenous areas of Oaxaca and Hidalgo; later, he worked as an educational assistant in camps for people displaced by violence in Central America and prisons and immigrant centers in Italy. He was a secondary and high school teacher in Mexico City (in the subjects of Journalism, Spanish Language, Logic, Ethics, and Philosophical Doctrines), in charge of psycho-pedagogical orientation for girls and boys with learning barriers, and a scriptwriter for Radio Educación.

He studied Philosophy at UNAM and Social Sciences at the University of Florence; he was a CONACYT Excellence Postgraduate Fellow and received UNAM’s Alfonso Caso medal for university merit. His teaching and research work has focused on the fields of applied ethics, public education policies, children’s rights, cultural change, and citizen participation, as a professor at UNAM’s Faculties of Philosophy and Letters and Medicine; at the Universidad Iberoamericana, the Tec de Monterrey, the Inter-American Institute of Social Security and the University of Chicago.

He participated in the National Bioethics Commission, designed the Transparency and Accountability Program for the Attorney General’s Office, and chaired the National Family Diagnosis conducted by DIF, INEGI, and UNAM.

He has been the keynote speaker at two Pan American Children’s Conferences and was the civil society representative for the OAS Interministerial Council on Education, and at the invitation of the UN Secretary-General, he is part of the advisory group of Education First, the Global Initiative for Education.

He is co-author of the thirteen books of educational studies of Mexicanos Primero, as well as of the methodology that compares the educational effort in the different states of the Republic.