XVIII Annual CAF Conference

Genaro Arriagada is a senior fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue. Arriagada has served as minister of the Chilean presidency, the country’s ambassador to the United States, and presidential special envoy to the Second Summit of the Americas. The national director of the 1988 “NO” Campaign, which resulted in the defeat of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, Arriagada managed two successful presidential campaigns.

Mario Bergara is minister of economy and finance of Uruguay. Bergara served as president of the Central Bank of Uruguay from 2008 to 2013, deputy minister of economy and finance from 2005 to 2008, and director of Uruguay’s Communications Services Regulatory Unit from 2001 to 2005.

Claudia Gurisatti is managing director of the Colombia-based news channel NTN24 and director of the opinion program La Noche. Throughout her award-winning career, Claudia has interviewed a wide range of public figures, from various Latin American presidents to Nobel Prize winners.

Ana Mercedes Botero is director of social innovation of CAF – Development Bank of Latin America. She has previously served as head of the community development program and director of the secretariat and external affairs. Before joining CAF in 1994, Botero worked for the United Nations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Colombia.

Felipe Calderón was president of Mexico from 2006 to 2012. Before that, Calderón served as secretary of energy during the Fox administration and as leader of the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) from 1996 to 1999.

Chiara Paola Capdevila is a member of the executive board of the Industrial Union of Paraguay, as well as proprietor and director of Capdeplast, a PET bottle manufacturing company, and president of Atman S.A., a trade company that promotes Paraguay’s goods and services abroad and attracts strategic foreign investment. She leads the Young Entrepreneurs Roundtable of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.

Augusto de la Torre is chief economist for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank. From 1993 to 1997, de la Torre headed the Central Bank of Ecuador, and was named “Best Latin American Central Banker” by Euromoney magazine in 1996.

Diego Escosteguy is the Brasília bureau chief of ÉPOCA Magazine. Before that, he was the magazine’s politics editor. Escosteguy has worked at news outlets such as Veja magazine and O Estado de S. Paulo.

Jessica Faieta is United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) assistant administrator and director of the Regional Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean. She has served as senior country director in Haiti and from 2007 to 2010, as UNDP resident representative in El Salvador and Belize. She held several high-level positions within the Executive Office of the United Nations Secretary-General between 2005 and 2006.

Jorge Familiar is vice president of the World Bank for Latin America and the Caribbean. Familiar has served as vice president and corporate secretary of the World Bank Group, CEO of Mexico’s Instituto del Fondo Nacional para el Consumo de los Trabajadores (Instituto FONACOT), and executive director and alternative executive director for the World Bank Group.

Richard Feinberg is a professor of international political economy at the University of California, San Diego, and served as president of the Inter-American Dialogue from 1992 to 1993. During the Clinton administration, Feinberg was senior director of the Inter-American Affairs Office at the National Security Council. He served as a staff member in the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Policy Planning Staff during the Carter administration.

Gustavo Fernández is former foreign minister of Bolivia. Fernández was minister of the presidency from 1989 to 1993 and Bolivia’s ambassador to Brazil from 1983 to 1984.

João Carlos Ferraz is managing director of the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES). He served as director of the Production and Corporate Development Division of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean from 2003 to 2007. He is also a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, where he was director of the Economics Institute from 1998 and 2003.

Keiko Fujimori is leader of the Popular Force political party in Peru and was the runner-up in the 2011 Peruvian presidential election. From 2006 to 2011, she served as a member of the Peruvian Congress. In 1996, Fujimori founded the Peruvian Foundation for Infant Cardiology, dedicated to providing children from low-income families with necessary medical treatment, which she led until 2006.

Enrique García has served as president and CEO of CAF – Development Bank of Latin America since 1991 and is co-vice chair of the Board of Directors of the Inter-American Dialogue. Previously, he was Bolivia’s minister of planning and coordination, head of the economic and social cabinet, and has also served as treasurer of the Inter-American Development Bank.

Marco Aurélio Garcia is foreign policy advisor to President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, a position he also held during the Lula da Silva administration from 2007 to 2010. From 2006 to 2007, Aurélio Garcia was interim president of the Workers Party (PT). Garcia is also a professor at the State University of Campinas.

Pamela Hartigan is director of the Skoll Centre for Social Entrepreneurship at Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford. Before that, she was the first managing director of the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Hartigan is founding partner of Volan Ventures, and sits on the boards of several social enterprises across eight countries.

Carla A. Hills served as US trade representative in the George H.W. Bush administration and as secretary of housing and urban development in the Ford administration. She is currently chair and CEO of Hills & Company, an international consulting firm, and is co-chair of the Inter-American Dialogue.

Enrique V. Iglesias was secretary-general of the Ibero-American General Secretariat (SEGIB) from 2005 to 2014. Previously, he served as president of the Inter-American Development Bank from 1988 to 2005 and as Uruguay’s minister of foreign relations from 1985 to 1988. He was executive secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (CEPAL) from 1972 to 1985 and president of the Central Bank of Uruguay from 1966 to 1968.

José Miguel Insulza is secretary-general of the Organization of American States. Prior to his election in 2005, he served in the government of Chile as minister of foreign affairs, minister secretary general of the presidency, and minister of interior.

Marie Carmelle Jean-Marie is minister of economy and finance of Haiti. Previously, she was vice-president and CFO of Oasis Hotels, head of the Caribbean arm of Groupe Caisse d’Épargne, senior advisor to the GB Group, and vice-president of the Haitian Fund to Help Women (FHAF). In 1995, she founded the management consulting firm Groupe Croissance.

Andrew Kassoy is co-founder of B Lab, a nonprofit that certifies socially and environmentally conscious businesses. Before that, he had a 16 year career in the private equity industry. Kassoy was previously a partner at MSD Real Estate Capital, an affiliate of MSD Capital.

Juanita León is director of La Silla Vacía, a Colombian news website. In the United States, she worked for the Wall Street Journal Americas and received a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. In Colombia, León served as peace unit editor for El Tiempo, where she covered Colombia’s peace process with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). León was also report editor of Semana magazine and helped to create the daily edition of semana.com.

Luis Vicente León is president of Datanálisis, a survey database specializing in global markets. He is also a professor at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello and the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración, both in Caracas, Venezuela.

Cecilia López Montaño has served in the government of Colombia as minister of the environment, minister of agriculture, director of national planning, director of social security, and ambassador of Colombia to the Netherlands. From 2006 to 2010, she was a senator in the Colombian national legislature. López Montaño is founder and president of the International Center of Social and Economic Thought (CiSoe).

Jennifer McCoy is director of the Americas program at the Carter Center and professor of political science at Georgia State University. McCoy leads the Center’s Friends of the Inter-American Democratic Charter group, and has directed Carter Center electoral monitoring missions in seven countries throughout Latin America.

Thomas F. McLarty, III is chairman of McLarty Associates, an international consulting firm, and chairman of McLarty Companies. He is also co-vice chair of the Board of Directors of the Inter-American Dialogue. During the Clinton administration, McLarty served as presidential chief of staff and special envoy for the Americas.

María Emma Mejía is the permanent representative of Colombia to the United Nations. Before that, she was the secretary general of the Union of South American Nations from 2011 to 2012. Mejía also served as minister of foreign affairs, minister of education, and ambassador of Colombia to Spain.

Francisco Monaldi is visiting professor of energy policy at Harvard University. He is also a Roy Family fellow of the Environment and Natural Resources Program and the Geopolitics of Energy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is the founder and director of the International Center on Energy and the Environment at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Administration (IESA) in Caracas, Venezuela, and has taught at notable universities in Colombia, Switzerland, Peru, and Venezuela.

Carlos Montero is a news anchor and co-host of Café CNN on CNN en Español. He has covered high profile domestic and international events and has interviewed three Latin American presidents, a former vice president, and two Nobel Prize winners.

Alejandra Mora Mora is minister for the status of women and executive president of the National Institute of Women in Costa Rica (INAMU). She also serves as president of the Inter-American Commission of Women. From 1993 to 2014, she was director of the Office for the Defense of Women in the Office for the Defense of Citizens of Costa Rica.

Luis Alberto Moreno is president of the Inter-American Development Bank. Moreno was ambassador of Colombia to the United States from 1998 to 2005. He served as minister of economic development of Colombia and president of the Instituto de Fomento Industrial (IFI), the Colombian government’s industrial finance corporation.

Ed Morse is global head of commodities research at Citigroup, Inc. Before that, he was head of commodities research for Credit Suisse and managing director and chief energy economist at Lehman Brothers. He served as director for international affairs at Phillips Petroleum Co. and co-founder and managing director of PFC Energy. In the Carter administration, Morse was deputy assistant secretary of state for international energy policy.

Rajat M. Nag was the managing director of the Asian Development Bank from 2006 to 2014. Before that, Nag headed the Bank’s Southeast Asia Department and was special adviser to the president on regional economic cooperation and integration. He began his 30 year career at the Bank of Canada, where he was an economist/financial analyst.

José Antonio Ocampo is a professor at Columbia University, where he directs the School of International and Public Affairs’ economic and political development concentration.. Ocampo has served as United Nations under-secretary general for economic and social affairs and executive secretary of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC). He has headed three national executive ministries in the government of Colombia.

Rosario Pérez is president and CEO of Pro Mujer, a leading Latin American women’s development organization that has disbursed more than $1 billion dollars since its founding in 1990. She has held numerous leadership positions at J.P. Morgan Chase, including executive of the company’s Latin America private banking division.

Ted Piccone is a senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy and Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. During the Clinton administration, he held senior positions in the National Security Council, State Department, and Defense Department. From 2001 to 2008, Piccone was co-founder and executive director of the Democracy Coalition Project.

Bill Richardson served as governor of New Mexico from 2003 to 2011. He was also US ambassador to the United Nations and energy secretary during the administration of President Bill Clinton. Currently, he is special envoy to the Organization of American States and senior fellow at Rice University’s James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy. He is a member of the Inter-American Dialogue.

Jennifer Riria is CEO of Kenya Women Holding Company, Ltd. and has worked with Kenya Women Financial Trust, the largest microfinance network in Kenya and Africa, since 1991. She is the chair of Women’s World Banking, a nonprofit with a global network of 39 microfinance institutions in 28 countries to provide poor women with credit, savings, and insurance products. Riria is also chair of the African Microfinance Action Forum.

Carlos Saladrigas is chairman and CEO of Regis HR Group, a professional employment organization. Before founding the company, he was chairman of Premier American Bank and co-founder and CEO of The Vincam Group, named in 1998 the largest Hispanic-owned company in the United States. He currently serves as chairman of the Cuba Study Group.

Hector Schamis is a professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Latin American Studies and Democracy and Governance program and columnist for El País. He is also a senior associate in the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and previously taught at Brown and Cornell universities. Schamis is the author of Re-Forming the State: The Politics of Privatization in Latin America and Europe (University of Michigan Press, 2002), and he writes extensively on topics such as authoritarianism, populism, and democratization.

Michael Shifter is president of the Inter-American Dialogue and adjunct professor of Latin American politics at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Before joining the Dialogue, Shifter directed the Latin American and Caribbean program at the National Endowment for Democracy and the Ford Foundation’s governance and human rights program in the Andean region and the Southern Cone, where he was based in Lima, Peru and then Santiago, Chile.

Adam Sieminski is the administrator of the United States Energy Information Administration (EIA). Before that, Sieminski was senior director for energy and environment at the National Security Council. He also served as chief energy economist and director and energy strategist for the global oil and gas equity team at Deutsche Bank, and worked at NatWest Securities as a senior energy analyst.

Jack Sim is the founder of the World Toilet Organization, a non-profit that aims to improve toilet and sanitation conditions worldwide. He is a successful businessman who established the Restroom Association of Singapore in 1998 to raise public toilet standards in his home country and around the world. Sim received the Singapore Green Plan Award in 2012 for his work and was named an environmental hero by Time Magazine in 2008.

Mauricio Tolmasquim is president of Empresa de Pesquisa Energética, which is affiliated with Brazil’s Ministry of Mines & Energy, and professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He was previously an executive secretary at the Ministry. Tolmasquim is also a former president of the Brazilian Society for Energy Planning.

Martín Torrijos was president of Panama from 2004 to 2009. Prior to serving as president, he was vice minister of government and justice in the Pérez Balladares administration (1994–1999). Torrijos is a member of the Board of Directors of the Inter-American Dialogue.

Juan Triana is professor in the Centro de Estudios de la Economía Cubana at the University of Havana. Triana has consulted for companies in Cuba, South Korea, and England. In 1997, the Ministry of Sciences, Technology, and Environment awarded him the National Prize in Economics for co-authoring La economía Cubana en 1996: resultados, problemas y perspectivas.

Julián Ugarte is executive director of Socialab, a platform for disruptive social startup companies that seeks to generate solutions to problems related to poverty and inequality. In 2010, he was recognized as one of the top 100 leaders in Chile by Revista El Sábado.

Aida Michelle Ureña de Maduro is president of the Union of Industrialists of Panama (SIP). Elected in 2012 and re-elected in 2013, she is the first woman to lead the union since its founding in 1945. Ureña de Maduro was previously general manager of Panaexport Group S.A., an international commerce company, and president of the Association of Free Zones of Panama (Azofrap).

Alejandro Werner is director of the Western Hemisphere Department of the International Monetary Fund. Before that, Werner was head of corporate and investment banking at BBVA-Vancouver. He taught economics at the Instituto de Empresa in Madrid, Spain, and he served as undersecretary of finance and public credit of Mexico in the Calderón administration.

Ignacio Zuasnabar is public opinion director and services manager at Equipos Consultores, Uruguay’s principal social research firm. He is a professor in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the Catholic University of Uruguay and vice president of the Uruguayan Political Science Association.