PhD in government, University of Viriginia. Researcher in Latin America for Chatham House and former professor at the School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) from Columbia University. He is a member of the Advisory boards at Harvard University, the America’s Division of the Advisory Board of Human Rights Watch and of Fundación Interamericana. HFX Fellow at the Foro de Seguridad Internacional of Halifax. Frequent collaborator in political magazines and newspapers and pundit on subjects regarding Latin America and foreign policy. He has appeared in multiple ocasions before the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States. In 2015 he founded and directed Global Americas, a nonprofit research organization, and edited his news website. Between 2005 and 2014 he was superior director of politics at the Sociedad and Consejo de las Américas (AS/COA) and founder and editor in chief of Americas Quarterly. At AS/COA he was the president of the work groups studying the rule of law in Cuba. He also was the director for Latin America and the Caribbean of the National Endowment for Democracy and scholar of the Asociación Americana para el Avance de la Ciencia, working at the Centro para la Democracia y la Gobernanza de la Agencia de los Estados Unidos para el Desarrollo Internacional.