Carlos Lopes is a professor at the Mandela School and current AU high representative to support member states in the negotiation of a new agreement with the European Union post-2020 and a member of the organization's reform team, led by Rwanda's President Paul Kagame. Professor Lopes served as executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Prior to this, he was UN representative in Zimbabwe and Brazil, director for development policy at the UN Development Program, executive director of UNITAR, director of the United Nations System Staff College, and former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan’s political director. He is a visiting professor at Sciences Po, Paris and serves in several boards, including Geneva's Graduate Institute and Waterloo University in Canada.