Established in 1996 as a joint initiative of CAF – Development Bank of Latin America, the Inter-American Dialogue, and the Organization of American States, the Annual CAF Conference brings together more than 1,000 world leaders to debate and discuss the most pressing developments facing the Americas. Now in its 21st year, the conference has grown to become the primary forum for policy makers and analysts, journalists, governments and international organizations, entrepreneurs and investors, and civil society representatives to review progress in the Western Hemisphere and address pending challenges.

Co-Organizers

Media Partners

Wednesday, September 6

Thursday, September 7

Chris Alden (United States) is the director of the Global South Unit, a research and teaching initative in the international relations deparmtment at the London School of Economics. 
 @LSE_Globalsouth

Gustau Alegret (Spain) is the US News Director of NTN24 where he also serves as political correspondent and TV anchor. Alegret is also the co-director and host of Poder Latino, a Sunday morning political talk show.
  @GustauAlegret  

Laura Alonso  (Argentina)  is the secretary for public ethics, transparency, and the fight against corruption in the Anticorruption Office of Argentina. She previously served as a national deputy for the City of Buenos Aires from 2009-2015 and as the executive director of Poder Ciudadano and the Argentine chapter of Transparency International.
@Lauritaalonso

Mario Bergara (Uruguay) is president of the Central Bank of Uruguay. He served as minister of the economy and finance from 2013 to 2015 and previously directed the country’s Communications Services Regulatory Unit.
@BancoCentral_Uy

Luis Carranza (Peru) is the president of CAF – the Development Bank of Latin America. He served as minister of economy and finance from 2006 to 2009. He previously served as the head of Latin America and emerging markets for BBVA and as a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank. 
@AgendaCAF

José Carrera (Ecuador) is the corporate vice-president of Social Development and the Environment at CAF. After joining CAF in 1999 as deputy manager at the Corporate Planning Office, Carrera worked as CAF’s country director and resident representative in Bolivia from 2003 to 2008 and as the assistant director of Country Programs from 2000 to 2003. He has also held positions in the public sector, including deputy minister of finance of Ecuador. 
@AgendaCAF 

Monica de Bolle (Brazil) is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and an adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to joining PIIE, de Bolle worked as managing partner of Galanto

MBB Consultants, a macroeconomics advisory firm based in Rio de Janeiro.
 @bollemdb

João Augusto de Castro Neves (Brazil) is the director for Latin America at the Eurasia Group. He co-manages Eurasia Group’s Brazil business development strategy and has lectured at top US and Brazilian universities, and conducted research on Latin American trade and regional integration. 
@BrazilPolitics

Carlos de la Torre (Ecuador) is the minister of finance of Ecuador. He previously served as the director of the Institute of Economic Research at the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, as well as a consultant to the OAS, the United Nations, the World Bank, and other international institutions

Denise Dresser (Mexico) is a Mexican political analyst, writer, and university professor. She is currently a faculty member of the department of political science at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, a columnist in Proceso magazine, and an editorial writer for the newspaper Reforma.
@DeniseDresserG

Eduardo Engel (Chile) is a professor of economics at the University of Chile and director of the anticorruption program at the think tank Espacio Público. He previously served as a professor at Yale University and chaired the  chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on Conflicts of Interest, Influence Peddling, and Corruption, also known as the Engel Commission.

Claudia Escobar (Guatemala) is a former magistrate of the Court of Appeals of Guatemala and a respected legal scholar and is currently a fellow at the National Endowment for Democracy.  Following her second election to the Court of Appeals in 2014, Escobar became the lead whistle blower in a case of grand corruption that revealed illegal interference in Guatemala’s judiciary by high-ranking political officials, including the country’s former vice president and the former president of congress.

Jorge Familiar (Mexico) is vice president for Latin America and the Caribbean at the World Bank. He was previously vice president and corporate secretary of the World Bank Group and CEO of Mexico’s Instituto del Fondo Nacional para el Consumo de los Trabajadores.
@Familiar_BM

Melina Flores (Brazil) is a federal prosecutor in Brasília. As a Federal Prosecutor in Bahia, she was the coordinator of Anti-corruption Unit. She is currently a member of the Lava-Jato working group in the office of the Attorney General of Brazil.

Francis Fukuyama (United States) is Olivier Nomellini Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), and the Mosbacher Director of FSI’s Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law at Stanford University. He has written widely on issues in development and international politics. His most recent book, Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, was published in September 2014. 
@FukuyamaFrancis

José Antonio García Belaunde (Peru) is the current ambassador of Peru to Spain and previously served as foreign minister from 2006 to 2011. During his time as foreign minister, Peru signed a free trade agreement with the United States, the European Union, China, Canada, and several other countries around the world.

Aníbal Gaviria (Colombia) served as mayor of Medellín, the second-largest city in Colombia, from 2012 to 2015. Prior to that, he served as the governor of Antioquia from 2004 to 2007. Gaviria is currently a visiting scholar at University of California, Berkeley.
 @anibalgaviria

Susan Glasser (United States) is POLITICO’s chief international affairs columnist and host of its weekly podcast, The Global Politico. Glasser served as founding editor of POLITICO Magazine and is the former editor in chief of Foreign Policy magazine. 
@sbg1

Carla A. Hills (United States) served as US trade representative under George H.W. Bush and as secretary of housing and urban development under Gerald Ford. She is currently chair and CEO of Hills & Company and co-chair of the Inter-American Dialogue’s Board of Directors.

Marta Lagos (Chile) is the founding director of Latinobarómetro Corporation, which carries out an annual public opinion survey that involves more than 20,000 interviews in 18 Latin American countries.
 @mmlagoscc

Danny Leipziger (United States) is professor of international business and international affairs at George Washington University, and managing director, the Growth Dialogue. Leipziger previously served as vice president for poverty reduction and economic management at the World Bank from 2004 to 2009, and has also served in senior positions at USAID and in the US Department of State.
 @GrowthDialogue

Luis Vicente León (Venezuela) 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.
@Luisvicenteleon

Santiago Levy (Mexico) is vice president for sectors and knowledge at the Inter-American Development Bank, and previously served as general manager and chief economist for the organization’s research department. He was also general director of the Mexican Social Security Institute (IMSS), the deputy minister at the ministry of finance and public credit of Mexico, and the president of the FCC in Mexico. 
@the_IDB

Susana Malcorra (Argentina) served as foreign minister of Argentina from 2015 to 2017. Prior to that, she was appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as chef de cabinet to the executive office of the United Nations. 
@SusanaMalcorra

Daniel Martínez (Uruguay) is the mayor of Montevideo, Uruguay. He previously served as the minister of industry, energy, and mining from 2008 to 2009.
 DMartinez_uy

Rodrigo Pardo (Colombia) is the editorial director of Semana magazine. He previously served a minister of foreign affairs of Colombia and as ambassador of Colombia to Venezuela and France. 
@RPardoGP

Pierre Pettigrew (Canada) has a long a career in government. He served as the minister of foreign affairs, international trade, health, intergovernmental affairs, and minister responsible for official languages. He is currently an executive advisor to Deloitte.

Marta Lucía Ramírez (Colombia) served as Colombia’s defense and trade minister. She was also a member of the Colombian Senate and the Conservative Party’s presidential candidate in 2010. Ramírez has been a member of the Inter-American Dialogue since 2004 and sits on the Board of Directors. 
@MLuciaramirez

Gabriela Ramos (Mexico) is the OECD Chief of Staff and Sherpa to the G20. In addition to her work on the G20 and the G7, Ramos leads the Inclusive Growth Initiative and the New Approaches to Economic Challenges and also oversees the work on education, employment, and social affairs, including gender issues.
@gabramosp

Michael Reid (United Kingdom) writes the Bello column on Latin America for The Economist and is the magazine’s writer-at-large for the region. He was previously Americas editor, South America bureau chief, and a Mexico and Central America correspondent. 
@Michaelreid52

Ana María Sanjuan (Venezuela) is a senior political advisor at CAF – Development Bank of Latin America in Corporate Direction of Economic Analysis and Knowledge for Development. She has also served as a consultant on issues related to governance, security, and international relations for the Inter-American Development Bank, the Organization of American States, and the Carter Center, among others.

Arturo Sarukhan (Mexico) is a career diplomat who served as Mexico’s ambassador to the US from 2007 to 2013. He previously served as Mexican Consul General in New York, Chief of Policy Planning, and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Inter-Americana Affairs, among other positions. He is a strategic consultant and speaker based in Washington, and a non-resident senior fellow in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings Institution. He sits on the board of Director of the Inter-American Dialogue. 
@Arturo_Sarukhan

Michael Shifter (United States) is president of the Inter-American Dialogue and an adjunct professor of Latin American politics at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. He previously 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. 
@MichaelShifter

Fernando Straface (Argentina) is the secretary general of the city of Buenos Aires. He is also one of the founders and former executive director of CIPPEC, a top think tank in Argentina. From 2003 to 2008, he worked as a government specialist at the Inter-American Development Bank. 
@fstraface

Juan Gabriel Valdés (Chile) is the current ambassador of Chile to the United States. He previously served as the ambassador of Chile to Argentina (2003), ambassador of Chile to the UN (2000-2003), minister of foreign affairs (1999), and ambassador of Chile to Spain (1990-1994), among other positions.
@jg_valdes

Rick L. Waddell (United States) is a major general in the United States Army Reserve who is currently serving as the deputy national security advisor to President Donald Trump.

Wang Huiyao (China) is the founder and president of the Center for China and Globalization, an independent global think tank in China. He previously served as senior fellow at Harvard Kennedy School and a visiting fellow at Brookings Institution. 
@HuiyaoWang

Lionel Zinsou (Benin) is a French-Beninese economist and investment banker. He served as prime minister of Benin from 2015 to 2016 and is the current president of Terra Nova, a think tank based on Paris, France.
 @Zinsouofficiel

Introductory Remarks and Keynote Address

Session I
A New Global Dynamic, A New Global Order? How does Latin America Fit In?

 Session II
Trump’s Foreign Policy Towards Latin America:
What Implications for Regional Integration?

Keynote Address
Dr. Rick L. Waddell

Session III
Latin america After the Commodity Boom: Old Challenges, New Strategies?

Session IV
Latin America Facing Corruption: Strengthening Accountability, Transparency,
and Independent Institutions

Interview
Trump’s Latin America and the New Global Order

Session V
The Electoral Cycle in Latin America: Democratic Renewal or Political Decay

Session VI
Cities in the Americas: How to Make them Smarter, Safer, and More Climate Resilient