Isaac José Woldenberg Karakowski (born 8 September 1952) is a Mexican political scientist and sociologist who served as the first president of the Federal Electoral Institute and currently works as director of Nexos magazine.

Woldenberg was born in Monterrey into a Jewish family that had immigrated from Eastern Europe.

His father, originally from Poland, arrived to Veracruz at the age of two and lived a few years in San Luis Potosí while his mother had been born in the northern state of Chihuahua into a family originally from Lithuania.

[4] He graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) with a bachelor's degree in Sociology (1975), a master's degree in Latin American Studies (1987) and began a doctorate in Political Science (1993-1995), but didn't complete it.

He was previously married to Julia Carabias, former Secretary of the Environment in the cabinet of Ernesto Zedillo, with whom he had a daughter.