About Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow
Jeffrey Davidow served in the U.S. Foreign Service for 34years. His professional focus was on Africa and Latin America. In Africa he served as political officer in South Africa, opened the U.S. Embassy in newly independent Zimbabwe, and was ambassador to Zambia where he was also the principal liaison to the South African National Congress headquarters in Lusaka in the period leading to Nelson Mandela's release from imprisonment. His book, A Peace in Southern Africa recounts the negotiations that led to Zimbabwe's independence. While in Africa and in the State Department's Africa Bureau in Washington, he was deeply involved in the mediation efforts to end apartheid and resolve civil wars in Angola, Mozambique, and Namibia.
Ambassador Davidow's other principal area of activity was Latin America where he served as a political officer in U.S. Embassies in Guatemala, Chile, and Venezuela. He returned to Venezuela as ambassador, and was later appointed Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere. His final posting was as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico where he spent four years and witnessed the end of one-party political domination in that country. His book, The Bear and the Porcupine: the United States and Mexico, details the issues and attitudes which both divide and unite the two nations.
He retired from the State Department in 2003 with the rank of Career Ambassador (by law restricted to five active duty Foreign Service officers), and is one of the United States’ most senior and respected diplomats.
Ambassador Davidow was President of the Institute of the Americas in San Diego, a leading institution in facilitating cooperation between government, business leaders and civil society representatives in the United States-Canada-Latin America. He now serves as a Senior Counselor for The Cohen Group in Washington D.C., an international business consultancy.
Ambassador Davidow and his wife Joan reside in San Diego.
About Richard Kiy
Richard Kiy was appointed as President & CEO of the Institute of the Americas on August 3, 2020. Kiy was formerly General Partner with Alumbra Advisors, a consulting firm with clients in the U.S, Mexico and Central America. Prior to that, Kiy served for nearly 14 years as President & CEO of the International Community Foundation
(ICF) where he expanded the foundation’s grantmaking throughout Mexico and 11 other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. While at ICF, Kiy served as Chairman and a founding board member of the US-Mexico Border Philanthropy Partnership.
Previous to his work at ICF, Kiy spent two years with PriceSmart, Inc. as Senior Vice President, Business Development expanding its business reach into 6 countries of Central America and the Caribbean. Earlier on, he was Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and Technical Director at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Environment, Health & Safety (EH&S) in Washington, D.C. as well as the Acting Environmental Attaché at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.
Kiy’s other private sector experience includes having served as Vice President for Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC)’s Mexican subsidiary, expanding the company’s environmental technology solutions and services business in Mexico following NAFTA’s passage. Later, he helped SAIC secure a multi-year $1.2 billion contract leading to a joint venture company with Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) where he was Director of Environment, Health and Safety (EH&S) Information Systems. Kiy is a graduate of Stanford (A.B. Economics, 1984) and Harvard’s JFK School of Government (MPA, 1986). Kiy is co-author of the book Environmental Management along North America’s Borders. He serves on the Binational Advisory Board of the San Diego Natural History Museum.
About Rafael Fernández de Castro
Rafael Fernández de Castro is a professor, Aaron Feldman Family Chancellor's Endowed Chair in U.S.-Mexican Studies in Memory of David Feldman, and director of the school's Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies (USMEX). A former foreign policy adviser to President Felipe Calderón, he is an expert on bilateral relations between Mexico and the U.S. Fernández de Castro is founder and former chair of the Department of International Studies at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) in Mexico City. He has published numerous academic articles and written several books, including “Contemporary U.S.- Latin American Relations: Cooperation or Conflict in the 21st Century?” and “The United States and Mexico: Between Partnership and Conflict” with Jorge Domínguez. He also worked as the Project Director of the UNDP’s Human Development Report for Latin America 2013-14, “Citizen Security with a Human Face: Evidence and Proposals for Latin America.” He is the founder and editor of Foreign Affairs Latin America and contributes to the daily newspaper El Financiero and a regular contributor to Televisa. His current research includes a book on leadership and decision-making in Mexican foreign policy. Fernandez earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from Georgetown University, an M.P in Public Policy from the University of Texas, Austin and his B.A. in Social Sciences from the Instituto Tecnólogico Autónomo de México (ITAM).
