Mauricio Cárdenas Santamaría (born 9 June 1962)[1] is a Colombian economist and politician who served as the 69th Minister of Finance and Public Credit and former Minister of Mines and Energy of Colombia in the administration of President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón.

[2] Born to Jorge Cárdenas Gutiérrez, former President of the National Federation of Coffee Growers of Colombia, and his wife Cecilia Santamaría Botero on 9 June 1962 in Medellín, Antioquia;[3] the third of four children, his other siblings are: Patricia Eugenia, Jorge Hernán, and Eduardo.

[6] In the private sector has served as 11th and 9th Director of the Higher Education and Development Foundation (Fedesarrollo),[7] as the 7th President Latin American and Caribbean Economic Association (LACEA),[8] as former President of Titularizadora Colombiana S.A., and as General Manager of Empresa de Energía de Bogotá S.A. ESP.On 20 September 2011 President Juan Manuel Santos Calderón designated Cárdenas to succeed Juan Carlos Echeverry as Minister of Economy.

In 2019, he became a Visiting Senior Research Scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA).

[11] Since 2020, Cardenas has been serving as a member of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response (IPPR), an independent group examining how the World Health Organization (WHO) and countries handled the COVID-19 pandemic, co-chaired by Helen Clark and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.