Luis Manuel Enrique Téllez Kuenzler (born October 13, 1958) is a Mexican

Mexico

The United Mexican States , commonly known as Mexico , is a federal constitutional republic in North America. It is bordered on the north by the United States; on the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; on the southeast by Guatemala, Belize, and the Caribbean Sea; and on the east by the Gulf of...

 economist. He is a former Secretary of Energy in the cabinet of Ernesto Zedillo

Ernesto Zedillo

Ernesto Zedillo Ponce de León is a Mexican economist and politician. He served as President of Mexico from December 1, 1994 to November 30, 2000, as the last of the uninterrupted seventy year line of Mexican presidents from the Institutional Revolutionary Party...

 and served as Secretary of Communications and Transportation in the cabinet of President Felipe Calderón

Felipe Calderón

Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa is the current President of Mexico. He assumed office on December 1, 2006, and was elected for a single six-year term through 2012...

 until 2009.

Téllez graduated from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México

Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México

The Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México , commonly known as ITAM, is a private Ph.D.-granting research university located in Mexico City, Mexico...

(ITAM) with a bachelor's degree in Economics (summa cum laude) took post graduate studies in Law at the National Autonomous University of Mexico

National Autonomous University of Mexico

The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México is a university in Mexico. UNAM was founded on 22 September 1910 by Justo Sierra as a liberal alternative to the Roman Catholic-sponsored Royal and Pontifical University of Mexico The Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) (National Autonomous...

 (UNAM) and received a doctorate's degree in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...

.

He is a member of the Institutional Revolutionary Party

Institutional Revolutionary Party

The Institutional Revolutionary Party is a Mexican political party that held power in the country—under a succession of names—for more than 70 years. The PRI is a member of the Socialist International, as is the rival Party of the Democratic Revolution , making Mexico one of the few...

 (PRI) since 1980, where he headed the Institute for Economic, Social and Political Studies (IEPES). He joined the federal cabinet as Undersecretary of Planning at the Secretariat of Agriculture during the Carlos Salinas de Gortari administration, headed the Office of the Presidency in the Ernesto Zedillo administration and, from 1997 to 2000, served as his Secretary of Energy. During his tenure at the Secretariat of Agriculture, he wrote the book "La Modernizacion del Sector Agropecuario y Forestal", where the (1998-1994) administration's objectives with respect to the agricultural sector are laid out (ISBN 968164347X).

When the PRI lost the Mexican presidency in 2000, Téllez joined the private sector as Executive Vice President and CEO of DESC, S.A. de C.V. Later on he joined The Carlyle Group

Carlyle Group

The Carlyle Group is an American-based global asset management firm, specializing in private equity, based in Washington, D.C. The Carlyle Group operates in four business areas: corporate private equity, real assets, market strategies and fund-of-funds, through its AlpInvest subsidiary...

 as Managing Director, focusing on buyout investment opportunities in Mexico.

On November 21, 2006, President-elect Felipe Calderón

Felipe Calderón

Felipe de Jesús Calderón Hinojosa is the current President of Mexico. He assumed office on December 1, 2006, and was elected for a single six-year term through 2012...

 announced he will serve as his Secretary of Communications and Transportation starting on December 1, 2006.

Luis Téllez was named "Global Leader of Tomorrow" by the World Economic Forum

World Economic Forum

The World Economic Forum is a Swiss non-profit foundation, based in Cologny, Geneva, best known for its annual meeting in Davos, a mountain resort in Graubünden, in the eastern Alps region of Switzerland....

, and "Leader for the New Millennium" by Time Magazine.

2009 Scandal

On February 2, radio host Carmen Aristegui interviewed Diana Pando, an ex-friend of Dr. Luis Tellez who claimed and presented a revealing audio inbox cell phone recording left by mistake by Luis Tellez in his cellular phone where he clearly says to some friends with him: "Salinas se robó la mitad de la cuenta secreta" (Salinas stole half of the secret account) supposedly talking about a secret account in the Mexican federal budget which consisted in thousands of millions of pesos (about hundreds of millions of US dollars) creating a scandal and calls for Tellez' resignation.

On March 3, President Calderon announced his resignation, and thanked him for his excellent management of the situation. His successor is Juan Molinar Horcasitas