2024 Fall Conference: Latin America | Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce

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Oct 18, 2024

Event, Fall Conference


Time	Event	Room
8:00	Breakfast	2
8:30	Welcome Dr. Joe Young, Director	1
8:45	Panel 1: Security Moderator: Dr. Rob Farley Panelists: Dr. Susan Brewer-Osario, Dr, Omar Garcia- Ponce, Dr. Erin McFee	1
10:15	Panel 2: Commerce Moderator: Dr. Yujia He Panelists: Michael Bowling, Tulio Vera, TBC	1
12:00 1:00	Lunch (Open time)	2
2:00	Panel 3: Diplomacy Moderator: Dr. Jonathan Powell Panelists: Dr. Oliver Kaplan, Carl Meacham, Dr. Lucia Motolinia	1
3:30	Break	Foyer
3:45	Panel 4: Development Moderator: Dr. Kathleen Montgomery Panelists: Enrique Rivas, Dr. Mario Picon, Dr. Joe Young	1
5:15	Conclusion Dr. Joe Young, Director	1
5:30	Reception	2

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Panel 1: Security

Moderator: Dr. Rob Farley
Panelists: Dr. Erin K. McFee, Dr. Omar Garcia-Ponce, Dr. Susan Brewer-Osorio

Erin McFee — Dr. Erin K. McFee

Professor of Practice, William J. Perry Center for Hemispheric Defense Studies, National Defense University
Dr. McFee is a political anthropologist who has published and been interviewed in a wide range of peer-reviewed, popular, and practitioner fora in over 20 countries. Her work in the domain of climate security addresses the climate change, conflict, and migration (CCM) nexus, especially with regards of FAA reintegration, stabilization, and security-building initiatives.Dr. McFee has additionally conducted extensive fieldwork among formerly armed actors since 2010 and worked directly in all sectors that impact the trajectories of these individuals’ lives. Her work ranges from spending 15 months living together with former conflict victims and guerrilla group members in Colombia to consulting for the International Agency for Migration (IOM) on al Shabaab reintegration in Somalia; from conducting ethnographic research and life history interviews among former Cartel affiliates in Mexico to assessing non-governmental organizations supporting former gang members in El Salvador; and from supporting restorative initiatives for justice-involved military veterans in the United States to understanding the life histories and current needs of Afghan National Army Special Forces veterans following the US withdrawal from their country, among many others. She currently has projects in 12 countries on the intersection of FAA reintegration, climate security, and migration.

Omar Garcia-Ponce — Dr. Omar Garcia-Ponce

Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, George Washington University
Omar García-Ponce is an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at The George Washington University. He writes and teaches on the causes and consequences of various forms of intrastate organized violence that are prevalent in low- and middle-income countries, ranging from local criminal gangs to armed rebellions and transnational organized crime groups. His regional expertise is in Latin America and he also teaches courses on US-Mexico relations and Latin American politics. His scholarly work has appeared in the American Journal of Political Science, the American Political Science Review, the Journal of Peace Research, Political Science Research and Methods, and World Politics, among other journals. This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the United States Agency for International Development, the United Nations University World Institute for Development Economics Research, and implemented in collaboration with local governments and civil society organizations. He received his PhD in Political Science from New York University in 2016 and a B.A. in Politics and Public Administration from El Colegio de México in 2006. Before joining GW, he was an Assistant Professor at UC Davis and a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the

Dr. Susan Brewer-Osorio — Dr. Susan Brewer-Osorio

Assistant Professor of Latin American Studies, University of Arizona
Dr. Brewer-Osorio’s research analyzes the micro dynamics of conflict and peacebuilding and organized resistance to militarized drug policies with a focus on Latin America. She approaches these topics using a broad range of qualitative methods including intensive field work, direct observation, and interviews. Dr. Brewer-Osorio’s current project on reintegration of former combatants of rebel groups analyzes Colombia’s innovative collective approach and impacts on grassroots peacebuilding. She is also involved in a collaborative research project on gender and ex-combatant reintegration with researchers at the Universidad EAFIT in Medellín, Colombia, and she directs the Security and Peacebuilding in Colombia study abroad program for the Center for Latin American Studies (CLAS). She is a 2023-24 Fellow of the Udall Center for Studies in Public Policy and a 2021 U.S. Fulbright Scholar (Colombia). She is also the recipient of a Peace Research Grant from the Peace Research Association Foundation (IPRAF) and a 2011 Fellow of the Drugs, Security, and Democracy (DSD) program with the Social Science Research Council (SSRC). Dr. Brewer-Osorio’s work is published in the Journal of Latin American Studies, Conflict, Security & Development, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, and the Latin Americanist.

Panel 2: Commerce

Moderator: Dr. Yujia He
Panelists: Michael Bowling, Tulio Vera, TBC

Dr. Michael Bowling — Michael Bowling

Hired by BellSouth as a technical specialist upon graduating in 1990 with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, Mr. Bowling began eyeing global openings within the company. After earning an MBA from Vanderbilt University in 1997, he began working in an internal group that specialized in consulting and business development abroad. His first taste of international operations came in 2000 as product marketing director for BellSouth International. In that role, Mr. Bowling led projects in Guatemala, Venezuela and Chile. Mr. Bowling’s success opened the way for him to become chief marketing officer for BellSouth’s wireless group in Lima, Peru. In 2009, Mr. Bowling left the United States again, this time moving to Mexico City to become president of AT&T Mexico. Managing a team of international professionals and personnel located in Mexico, Mr. Bowling was responsible for managing relationships with local partners America Movil, Telmex and Telmex International. That year, he also accepted a position as an adjunct professor of management on the Executive MBA faculty at Vanderbilt University. 2012 brought Mr. Bowling back to the U.S., where he became AT&T’s chief marketing officer for business solutions. His areas of responsibility included network sourcing, hosting, cloud and application services, mobility, IP networking and leading an organization of 4,000 people that accounted for approximately half of AT&T’s revenue. Toward the end of 2013, Mr. Bowling was named senior vice president of corporate strategy—his 13th position with the company since joining in 1990.

Tulio Vera — Tulio P. Vera

Tulio P. Vera has over 25 years of experience in policy and financial markets, specializing in Emerging Markets (EM). His expertise is in macroeconomics and country risk, as well as in debt, interest-rate, and currency markets in EM. Over his career, he has built and ran successful EM investment strategy and macroeconomic research teams, launched his own hedge fund, and worked as a portfolio manager and on multilateral policy issues. He has been active in EM financial markets since their inception. Tulio was a Managing Director and the Chief Investment Strategist for the J.P. Morgan (JPM) Latin America Private Bank, responsible for providing multi-asset investment strategy for client portfolios in global equities, fixed income, and alternatives. He also sat on the JPM Private Bank’s Global Investment Committee. Tulio is currently a co-owner of Nolita Wine Merchants, a fine wine enterprise in Manhattan; a board member of Friends of the Catholic University of Chile; and an advisor to the board of NESsT (Nonprofit Enterprise and Self-Sustainability Team). Previously, he sat on the board of the North American-Chilean Chamber of Commerce (NACCC). He remains involved in various financial advisory assignments.

Dr. Jorge Arias — Dr. Jorge Arias

Senior Consultant for the Agribusiness Industry, AllTech
Dr. Arias has more than thirty years of experience with international markets, especially in Latin America. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky in Crop Science and has worked for AllTech, based in Nicholasville, for over twenty years. He is now a senior consultant for the Agribusiness Industry with AllTech.

Panel 3: Diplomacy

Moderator: Dr. Jonathan Powell
Panelists: Dr. Oliver Kaplan, Carl Meacham, Dr. Lucia Motolinia

Oliver Kaplan — Dr. Oliver Kaplan

Associate Professor, Joseph Korbel School of International Studies
Oliver Kaplan is an Associate Professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies at the University of Denver. He is the author of the book, “Resisting War: How Communities Protect Themselves” (Cambridge University Press, 2017), which examines how civilian communities organize to protect themselves from wartime violence. He was a Jennings Randolph Senior Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and previously a postdoctoral Research Associate at Princeton University in the Woodrow Wilson School and at Stanford University. As part of his research Kaplan has conducted fieldwork in Colombia and the Philippines. His research has been funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Smith Richardson Foundation and other grants and has been published in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Stability, The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, CNN, and National Interest. Kaplan received his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and completed his B.A. at UC San Diego.

Carl Meacham — Carl Meacham

Bower Group Asia’s LATAM Lead
Carl Meacham is a seasoned foreign policy professional with extensive experience in public service, think tanks, and the private sector. Before leading Bower Group Asia’s LATAM work, he served as CEO of Global Americans, a nonpartisan think tank focused on U.S. policy toward the Americas. Carl was Senator Richard Lugar’s senior staffer for Latin America on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and directed the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In the private sector, he held leadership roles in government affairs for Latin America at Uber and PhRMA and was a Managing Director at FTI Consulting, where he specialized in strategic communications and political risk management. Carl currently serves in advisory roles at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center in Washington, D.C., and at Andes Risk Group, based in Santiago, Chile. Earlier in his career, Carl worked for Senate Majority Leaders Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid and held a political appointee position in President Bill Clinton's administration at the U.S. Department of Commerce. Carl holds a B.A. from the University at Albany, State University of New York, and M.A. degrees from Columbia University and American University. He is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Born in the United States and a native Spanish speaker, Carl spent much of his childhood in Chile, his mother’s country of origin.

Dr. Lucia Motolinia — Dr. Lucia Motolinia

Assistant Professor of Political Science, Washington University at St. Louis
Dr. Motolinia is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research interests lie in Comparative Politics, Electoral Institutions, Legislative Behavior, Money in Politics, and Quantitative Text Analysis, with a regional focus on Mexico and Latin America. Her research tries to better understand how different institutional incentives affect elite behavior, emphasizing the mechanisms driving the behavior of individual politicians and parties. She combines observational data, natural experiments, and text-analysis to study the way electoral institutions affect important political outcomes such as political selection, party cohesion, and distributive politics. This research has appeared or is forthcoming in The American Political Science Review, World Politics and Electoral Studies.

Panel 4: Development

Moderator: Dr. Kathleen Montgomery
Panelists: Enrique Rivas, Dr. Mario Picon, Dr. Joe Young

Enrique Rivas — Enrique Rivas

Senior Vice President, Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Business Unit, Chemonics
Enrique Rivas is the Senior Vice President, Latin America and the Caribbean Regional Business Unit. He has more than 30 years of experience with social and economic development projects in areas of post-conflict and political instability. He has served as chief of party on six programs, including on the Juntos Para la Prevención de la Violencia (“preventing violence together,”) project in Mexico and the Environmental Management and Forest Governance Support Activity (Bosques) in Peru. He has significant experience developing strategic alliances with private sector actors and local authorities, including indigenous communities, local associations, municipal authorities, and national ministries. He earned a post-graduate diploma in agribusiness from the Technological Institute of Superior Studies in Monterrey, Mexico; and a B.S. in agriculture from the Universidad Mayor de San Simon in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Universidad Nacional de Cuyo in Mendoza, Argentina.

Chemonics

Mario G. Picon — Dr. Mario G. Picon

Dr. Mario G. Picon is director of The Governance Action Hub, a new Results for Development (R4D) initiative to explore and expand the frontiers of what is possible in governance reforms by actively involving local stakeholders in the solution of concrete challenges, and the pursuit of common goals. This program builds on the learnings from the Leveraging transparency to reduce corruption initiative of R4D and Brookings Institution, which Mario has led over the last five years. His 20-year experience in international development has been focused in bringing diverse perspectives, evidence use strategies and system approaches to challenges in governance, health, education, rural development, and more. He has held roles at 3ie, the World Bank, Brookings, FAO, and the Inter-American Development Bank. He has a doctorate in Public Policy for the University of Maryland, a master’s in Agricultural Economics and in Demography for the Pennsylvania State University and is an economist from Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú.

Joe Young, Director — Dr. Joe Young

Dr. Young has recently taken the role of director in the Patterson school after holding a number of leadership positions from American University over the past 14 years in several different schools. After acting as a department chair for five years, he took on his most recent role as the Associate Dean for Research where he advised people in the School of Public Affairs seeking funded research opportunities. Dr. Young began his academic career receiving a bachelor’s degree in international relations and economics from Stetson University in Florida. After living abroad in Brazil for two years, Dr. Young returned to the United States to get his master’s degree from Ohio University in political science with a focus on international relations, a certificate in contemporary history, and a PhD from Florida State University in political science with a focus on international relations.

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