His mother, Karen Olsen Beck, an American social worker born to Danish immigrant parents, later adopted Costa Rican nationality.
Figueres completed his undergraduate studies at the United States Military Academy (West Point), where he graduated in the Class of 1979 with a major in Engineering.
Upon returning to Costa Rica after concluding his studies at West Point, he joined and later led the restructuring process of the deeply indebted family business, Sociedad Agroindustrial San Cristobal (SAISC) .
[citation needed] Figueres helped return the business to profitability by disposing of non-productive assets, reducing leverage, improving the efficiency of many industrial processes, and focusing on expanding exports.
[citation needed] Years later, in 1990, Figueres co-founded Energía Global Inc. a renewable energy company with operations in Costa Rica, Guatemala, and Chile.
Terremark is involved in transforming and securing enterprise-class IT on a global scale, providing industry managed services, cloud computing, colocation and web hosting solutions for enterprise IT infrastructures from their data centers.
In 2005, Figueres undertook a one-year assignment as Managing Director of Talal Abu-Ghazaleh Organization, responsible for refocusing global consulting within the group.
From 2006 to 2009, Figueres served on the International Advisory Board of Abraaj Capital, the largest Middle East Private Equity firm with over $6 billion of assets under management.
IJ Partners was founded in 2009 during the global economic crisis, to provide financial services to private individuals and family offices investing exclusively in tangible assets.
In 1986 Nobel Peace Prize Laurate and President Óscar Arias (1986–1990), appointed Figueres to overhaul the ailing National Railway System, INCOFER.
Upon the completion of the governmental period Figueres continued his academic studies at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, graduating in 1991 with a master's degree in Public Administration.
According to Leonardo Garnier, minister of Planning and Economic Policy during the Figueres' administration, the latter promoted Sustainable Development as the integrating architecture of governmental action.
Thirdly, for society to develop itself in harmony with nature (from the book "Gobernando en Tiempos de Cambio: Administración Figueres Olsen", by Leonardo Garnier).
[4] Figueres reformed and reorganized many public institutions including the closing of some of them, such as Banco Anglo Costarricense (which was plagued with corruption charges) and the National Railway System (INCOFER) which after being re-organized several times was again insolvent.
[6] During his term, government created the EBAIS (Primary Teams of Basic Health Care) as a provider of preventive medicine in the communities, primarily by giving easy access to medical services.
[8] Figueres accused the Romero brothers of libel and in 1993 a court acquitted them while condemning their main source, former drug-enforcement officer Walter Campos.
[10] To dispel the strong rumors Monsenor Román Arrieta, Archbishop of San José and President of the Episcopal Conference was obliged to pronounce himself acknowledging that Figueres had been baptized a Roman Catholic.
On 5 December 2005 the Internal Revenue Service of Costa Rica notified Figueres of no financial misconduct with resolution number 5452000009594 dated 27 October 2005.
On 6 September 2005, Judge Maria Morales of the First Circuit Court of Costa Rica pronounced a ruling in Figueres' favour, and against the Congressional Commission's procedures.
The foundation started and developed pioneering programs, such as LINCOS (Little Intelligent Communities), APVE (Clean Transport Alternatives) and CENTAIRE (Center for monitoring and evaluation of Air Quality in Central America).
His responsibilities included coordinating the annual meeting of the forum in Davos, Switzerland, which brought together prominent corporate leaders, heads of State and government, as well as respected personalities from the academic, cultural and religious world.
Figueres is a founding member of the Club de Madrid,[17] an independent non-profit organization with the objective to promote "Democracy that Delivers", composed of more than 100 former Presidents and Prime Ministers from all over the world.