Alfonso Dávila Ortiz (4 April 1922 – 10 November 2015) was a Colombian civil engineer, diplomat, businessman and forester, former ambassador to Spain and Kuwait, Chargé d'Affaires in the United States of America, Governor of the Province of Cundinamarca, President of the Colombian Banker’s Association, twice President of the Colombian Association of Engineers, Councilor of the city of Bogotá, lifelong President of Bogotá’s Jockey Club and member of Colombia’s National Council of Public Works. Education Alfonso Dávila Ortiz was born in Bogotá, Colombia to José Domingo Dávila Pumarejo and Paulina Ortiz on 4 April 1922. On 22 April 1944 he married Gladys Silva Chéreau, daughter of Colombian General Miguel Silva Plazas and Bertha Chéreau. They had eight children, six of whom survive. He died peacefully surrounded by his family on 10 November 2015 in Bogotá. Following the sale in 1926 to the Municipality of Bogotá of the Compañía Nacional de Electricidad that he had founded (which merged with another private firm to create the nationalised Empresas Unidas de Energia), his father took his family to Europe (Brussels, Paris and Eastbourne) for five years. Dávila Ortiz was subsequently educated in the traditional Gimnasio Moderno of Bogotá, and graduated at 16. He completed a degree in Civil Engineering at Bogotá’s Universidad Nacional 5 years later. While running a successful construction businesses he subsequently completed a postgraduate degree in Economics at Bogotá’s Universidad de los Andes (1963), an MSc in Marketing in Spain (1982) and a postgraduate degree in Business Management at INALDE in Bogotá (1986). On 21 April 1961 the Universidad Distrital in Bogotá awarded him an Honorary Doctorate in Forestry. Business career Dávila Ortiz started his professional career in housing construction in Bogotá, subsequently moving into construction of public infrastructure in the 1950s and early 1960s, mainly in Colombia’s Atlantic Coast. As CEO of private construction firms he had co-founded, he oversaw the completion of the Ciénaga-Barranquilla and Santa Marta-Riochacha highways, the Ernesto Cortissoz Airport in Barranquilla, the Simón Bolívar Airport in Santa Marta and the Atlántico Railway (Santa Rosa-El Paso section). Such interventions were seen as important propellers of development of Colombia's Caribbean region, as the physical isolation of the region from the centre of the country had historically been a major source of concern to national and local decision-makers and business entrepreneurs. In the 1940s he was one of a number of young Colombian professionals who were gradually taking