National politics

A member of the National Liberation Party, Grynspan served as a vice-minister of finance from 1986 to 1988 during the presidency of Óscar Arias. She was Vice President of Costa Rica from 1994 to 1998 under José María Figueres, serving concurrently as minister for social affairs (1994−1998) and housing (1995−1996).

International roles

Grynspan was director of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) office in Mexico from 2001 to 2006, where she co-chaired the executive board of the International Food Policy Research Institute.^{[2] [3]} During this time she was a member of both the United Nations Millennium Project's task force on poverty and economic development and the United Nations high-level panel on financing for development. She served as an Assistant Secretary-General and Regional Director for Latin America and the Caribbean at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) from 2006 to 2010,^[4] and in 2010 she was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, to the position of Under-Secretary-General and Associate Administrator of UNDP, under the leadership of Helen Clark.

Grynspan served as Secretary-General of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB) from 2014 to 2021.^[5][6][7] During this time she was appointed by Ban Ki-moon to serve as a member of the Lead Group of the Scaling Up Nutrition Movement.^[8] In 2021 she was appointed by the G20 to serve on a high-level independent panel on financing the global commons for pandemic preparedness and response, co-chaired by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Lawrence Summers.^[9]

In 2021 Grynspan was appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General, António Guterres, to serve as the eighth Secretary-General of UN Trade and Development (UNCTAD), becoming the first woman in that role.^[10][11] She is also a member of the Program for the Support of Women's Leadership and Representation at the Inter-American Development Bank, and was previously vice president of the board of directors of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, D.C.

On 8 October 2025, Grynspan was nominated by the President of Costa Rica, Rodrigo Chaves, as an official candidate in the 2026 election to succeed Guterres as United Nations Secretary-General.^[12] Following the first of several "straw poll" votes conducted by the United Nations Security Council in July 2026, Grynspan emerged as a leading contender, along with the Guyanese diplomat Carolyn Rodrigues.^[1]