Walter Hecox grew up in Denver, where he graduated from East High School. He attended Colorado College from 1960 to 1964, and then spent a year in Pakistan on a Fulbright Fellowship at the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics. He earned a master’s degree from Syracuse University in 1967 and completed his Ph. D. in Economics at Syracuse in 1969. Hired as an assistant professor at Colorado College in 1970, he taught international economics and environmental economics until his retirement in 2014. He took leaves to serve as a senior Fulbright Lecturer at Quaid e Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan, in 1976-77, and as a trade and tariff policy adviser for the World Bank in Nairobi, Kenya, 1982-84. He founded the Colorado Rockies project.