Clare Seelke came to Congressional Research Service in 2003 as a presidential management fellow (PMF). CRS is a non-partisan research agency that serves the members and committees of Congress and their staffs, located in the Library of Congress. As part of her fellowship, she completed rotations with the State Department in the Dominican Republic and with the U.S. Agency for International Development in Washington DC. She currently focuses on Mexico, Venezuela, and Central America, with a special focus on security issues and migration.

Monica Ramirez de Arellano is the M&A Lead at Blockchain.com. Prior to this, she was a senior manager at Restaurant Brands International (RBI) in Miami. She graduated with an MBA/MA from The Wharton School and The Lauder Institute in 2020. Previously, she was an attorney and banker in New York. She earned a JD from NYU School of Law, and an AB from Princeton University. Originally from Puerto Rico, she is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.

Francisco Martinez is senior associate at AS/COA Miami. His work helps facilitate dialogue between the private sector in Miami and the public sector in Latin America, with the ultimate goal of promoting economic prosperity and social development in the region. He also leads the Young Professionals of the Americas (YPA)—the young leaders initiative of COA in Miami.

Lucas Ferraz is secretary of foreign trade at the Brazilian Ministry of Economy. He is an engineer and holds a PhD in economics from Getúlio Vargas Foundation in São Paulo. He was a senior consultant in international trade for the World Bank and UNCTAD and is one of the coordinators of the Brazilian Chair at the World Trade Organization.

Rob Strayer serves as the executive vice president of policy at the Information Technology Industry Council (ITI). He leads ITI’s efforts to shape technology policy around the globe to enable innovation, competition, and economic growth, while supporting governments efforts to achieve their public policy objectives.

Ambassador Julio Fiol is the ambassador of Chile in Japan. He graduated from the diplomatic academy. He is a lawyer with a degree in legal and social sciences from the University of Chile. As a foreign service official, he has served in Chilean missions to the United Nations, Italy, Miami, Mexico, New York, and Washington DC.

Ambassador Márcia Donner Abreu holds a B.A. in law from Cândido Mendes College and postgraduate degrees in Development from the Institut Universitaire d'Etudes du Développement and in international law from the Graduate Institute of International Studies, both in Geneva. She joined the Rio Branco Institute in 1986. At the foreign ministry’s headquarters in Brasília, she has worked in the areas of environment, trade service negotiations, and Mercosur extra-regional negotiations.

Ambassador Teiji Hayashi holds a bachelor of public law from Tokyo University and a master of arts in European studies from Universidad Politechnica de Madrid. Mr. Hayashi is currently the assistant minister in the Latin American and Caribbean Affairs Bureau office at the Foreign Ministry of Japan.