Simone Cecchini is Chief of the Latin American and Caribbean Demographic Centre (CELADE)-Population Division of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), where he leads a team of professionals working to strengthen the capacity of the region's countries to analyse population dynamics and their interlinkages with sustainable development, with a view to incorporating demographic factors into public policy. 

He joined ECLAC in 2002 and has held positions in the Office of the Secretary of the Commission, the Statistics Division and the Social Development Division. Previously, he worked as a researcher in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Department of the World Bank (1998–2002) and as a data researcher for Navteq (1994–1996). 

Mr Cecchini graduated with honours in political sciences from the University of Florence, having written a thesis on the population census in Italy. He holds a master's degree in international economics from George Washington University, as well as an MBA from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.