Roberto Echandi is the investment policy global lead of the Investment Climate Unit of the Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice of the World Bank Group. Prior joining the World Bank Group, he was director of the Program on International Investment at the World Trade Institute (WTI) of the University of Bern. Echandi is also a member of the Faculty of the Masters in International Law and Economics at the WTI, and of the Masters in International Economic Law at the University of Barcelona, a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of International Economic Law, and the Journal of World Investment and Trade. He was appointed ambassador of Costa Rica to Belgium, Luxembourg and the European Union from 2007 to 2010. During the same period he also was the chief negotiator of Costa Rica to the negotiations of the Association Agreement between the European Union and Central America, where he led the negotiation process on behalf of Costa Rica and in many occasions for the whole Central American region. He served as special adjunct ambassador for U.S. Trade Affairs and Costa Rica’s lead negotiator in services and investment in the U.S.-Central America Free Trade Agreement from 2002 to 2005. He has also been adjunct professor of law, visiting scholar and fellow at the Institute for International Economic Law of the Georgetown University Law Center, in Washington D.C. He has also served as director-general for International Trade at the Ministry of Foreign Trade of Costa Rica and as legal advisor to the Appellate Body Secretariat of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, Switzerland. He has published on the legal and political economy dimensions of investment issues, dispute settlement; trade in services and regional economic integration in the Americas. He has served as a consultant to the OECD, the World Bank, UNCTAD, the Organization of American States, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the WTO. Echandi undertook his doctoral and LLM studies in international trade law at the University of Michigan School of Law at Ann Arbor, Michigan. He holds a master’s degree in Latin American studies with emphasis in economic integration from the University of Oxford; he holds a bachelor’s degree in law from the University of Costa Rica, and has taken specialized negotiation courses at the JFK School of Government at Harvard University.