Heraldo Muñoz Valenzuela (born July 22, 1948) is a Chilean political scientist, academic, diplomat and politician; the former Minister of Foreign Affairs of Chile under President Michelle Bachelet; former Assistant Secretary General, Assistant Administrator, and Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the United Nations Development Programme; and the former Chilean Ambassador to the United Nations, to Brazil, and to the Organization of American States. Early life and career Heraldo Muñoz was born in Santiago on July 22, 1948. After graduating from Liceo de Aplicación, an all-boys public high school, he attended the University of Chile where he studied English. After the first year, he left to major in political science at the State University of New York (SUNY), Oswego, thanks to a scholarship from the Institute of International Education. After gaining his B.A. at SUNY, he obtained a Diploma in international relations from the Catholic University of Chile (1975, graduated with honors), followed by a Masters (M.A.) and a Doctorate (Ph.D.) in international relations from the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver, Colorado (1978). He was a doctoral fellow at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C. (1977), where he wrote his Ph.D. dissertation. He received fellowships from Resources for the Future, the Ford Foundation, the Tinker Foundation, the Twentieth Century Fund, and the MacArthur Foundation. Upon completion of his doctorate, Muñoz went back to Chile and returned to work as an academic at the University of Chile's Institute of International Studies, having started there as professor in 1974. He taught, researched and published extensively in the field of international relations in this period; and also founded and directed the Program on Latin American Foreign Policies (PROSPEL), a foreign policy research institute which published annual reports on the foreign policies of Latin American governments (1984-1990). In 1987, he co-founded Chile's Party for Democracy (PPD), and participated in the Executive Committee of the "No" Campaign which defeated Augusto Pinochet in the 1988 plebiscite. Prior to that, he was a member of Chile's Socialist Party (1983-1986), and served as secretary of foreign relations and member of its central committee; he also ran as candidate for undersecretary general on a list headed by Ricardo Lagos. Diplomatic career Once democracy returned to Chile, Muñoz was named Ambassador Permanent Representative for Chile to the Organization of American States by President Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994); during his mission, he sat on