Andrew Biles is the former Chief Executive Officer of Chiquita and a current member of the company’s Executive Board. In the past, he has served as the President of the European Fruit Juice Association, the CEO of the Gerber Emig Group Limited, the European Chief Operating Officer of the Dole Food Company, and the Head of Business Development and International Sales at Springs Industries Incorporated.
Julio Álvarez currently serves as the Chief Country Officer for Guatemala on behalf of Citi. As the CEO, Mr. Alvarez works with Citi’s first-rate cliental to increase corporate and investment banking in the country. He has worked in the private sector at Citi for more than 15 years where he was successfully created partnerships with some of Latin-America’s most important investors. He has done so by creating a broad range of portfolio opportunities, such as Equity and Debt offerings, hedging strategies, and various successful mergers and acquisitions.
Ricardo Quiñónez Lemus has served as the Mayor of Guatemala City since 2018. He was previously the First Councilor, a post he occupied from 2008 to 2018. He was also elected to be the First Syndic of the Municipality of Guatemala in 2003. Quiñónez is the founder of the Unionist Party, which he remains a leader of.
Jazmin de la Vega serves as Guatemala’s Minister of Communications, Infrastructure, and Housing. Minister de la Vega has had a long career as a government official. She was first elected as a Deputy to the Guatemalan senate in 1996, where she served on behalf of the Partido de Avanzada Nacional. She left her post in the Senate in 1998 to become the Housing Coordinator at the Ministry of Communications, Infrastructure and Housing.
Bernardo Arévalo has served as the fifty-second President of Guatemala since January 15, 2024. First surfacing on the political scene in 2020, he served as a Deputy in the Guatemalan Congress from 2020 until this year. Before running for public office, President Arévalo worked as the Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs under President Carpio from 1994 to 1995 and as the Guatemalan Ambassador to Spain from 1995 to 1996.
As president for Microsoft Latin America, Alberto “Tito” Arciniega focuses on supporting and accelerating the digital journey of countries, communities, and markets in the region through technologies such as artificial intelligence and cloud services, enabling Microsoft customers and ecosystem in the region to achieve more, seize opportunities, and continue growing through innovative and secure solutions.
Idil Yasa was appointed to JTI’s Executive Committee as Regional President, Americas, in September 2021. She is responsible for the region’s performance, development and growth.
Idil brings a wealth of commercial experience with more than 20 years at JTI, across a wide range of business disciplines. She holds Turkish and Swiss nationalities.
Prior to taking up her current role, she held the General Manager position for the CzHuSk (Czech, Hungary, Slovakia) markets cluster.
Carlos Motta’s (b. 1978, Colombia) multi-disciplinary art practice documents the social conditions and political struggles of sexual, gender, and ethnic minority communities in order to challenge normative discourses through acts of self-representation. As a historian of untold narratives, Motta is committed to in-depth research on the struggles of post-colonial subjects and societies. His work manifests in a variety of mediums including video, installation, sculpture, drawing, web-based projects, performance, and symposia.