José Luis Curbelo graduated in Economics from the University of the Basque Country and holds a PhD from the University of California-Berkeley and an MSc in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He has also taken training programs at Harvard University, Harvard Business School, the John F. Kennedy School of Government, the University of California-Los Angeles, the Amsterdam Institute of Finance, and the World Bank, among others. His graduate studies were funded by grants from the Fulbright-Fundación Banco de Bilbao, Fundación Juan March, the National Science Foundation and the Newhouse Foundation (the latter two in the United States).

Curbelo is currently Chairman and CEO of Compañía Española de Financiación del Desarrollo (COFIDES), a fund management company owned by the Spanish State (53%) and Spain's leading commercial banks (47%) that invests through equity, quasi-equity and debt instruments in private companies and projects in Spain and other countries.

Previously, José Luis Curbelo was Investment Director at COFIDES for ten years, Vice President of Development Strategies and Public Policies and Chief Economist at CAF Development Bank of Latin America, General Manager of the Basque Institute of Competitiveness (Orkestra), and Unit Chief for Private Sector Development at the Multilateral Investment Fund (MIF), under the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), among others.

In the academic field, he is a senior scientist at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He has also been Dean of the Faculty of Law and Economics at Camilo José Cela University, Director of the BBVA Chair of Entrepreneurship at Antonio de Nebrija University, Professor of Project Finance at Carlos III University, Lecturer at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) and Visiting Professor at the Federal University of Minas Gerais in Belo Horizonte (Brazil).