JOSÉ F. ALONSO is a sugar analyst and a former member of the Office of Cuba Broadcasting, Radio Martí Program, Office of Research.
JOSE ÁLVAREZ is Professor, Food and Research Economics Department, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida, where he works as the Area Economist at the Everglades Research and Education Center, Belle Glade, Florida. He has traveled to Cuba in the past few years as one of the principal investigators in two grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to study Cuban agriculture and the potential economic impact on the agricultural economies of Florida and Cuba after the lifting of the U.S. economic embargo. He earned a B.A. in Economics (1971) and M.S. (1974) and Ph.D. (1977) in Food and Resource Economics all from the University of Florida.
DOMINGO AMUCHASTEGUI is a Ph.D. Candidate at the School of International Studies, University of Miami. He was an intelligence officer in the Cuban Armed Forces and also served in the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was a professor at the Instituto Superior de Relaciones Internacionales of the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the Colegio de Defensa Nacional of the Cuban Armed Forces and has also taught at other universities in Cuba and Mexico. He has authored or co-authored numerous professional books and articles published in Cuba, Mexico, Spain, Portugal and Brazil, among them Historia Contemporanea de Asia y Africa (4 volumes, La Habana, Editora Pueblo y Educación, 1984-89) and Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis (London, 1998).
JUAN M. DEL AGUILA is Associate Professor of Political Science at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. He sholds a B.A.in Political Science, University of Florida, 1973; and a Ph.D. in Political Science, University of North Carolina, 1979. Professor del Aguila has published widely on Cuban domestic politics and foreign policy, including articles and chapters on the Cuban Communist party, the armed forces, and on elite dynamics.
TEO A. BABÚN, Jr., is President and CEO of Cuba-Caribbean Development Company, Ltd. He is an Electrical Engineer and Business Management graduate of the Michigan Technological University. Mr. Babún is the author of The Business Guide to Cuba, a special report dealing with the current and postembargo business opportunities in the island; Cuba Sea & Air Transportation, a report dealing with existing infrastructure and opportunities in Cuba; and coauthor of Cuba Infrastructure & Opportunities, a report dealing with ten key industries in Cuba.
ERNESTO BETANCOURT is a consultant on government reform. Has an MPIA from the University of Pittsburgh and studied Advertising and Marketing at American University. He was the first Director and organizer of Radio Marti and represented Castro in Washington in 1957-58. Has written extensively on the Cuban Revolution.
ROGER R. BETANCOURT is Professor of Economics at the University of Maryland-College Park. He has been a Visiting Professor and Scholar at INSEAD (Fontainbleau, France) and he held the Kermit O. Hanson Visiting Chair at the University of Washington in 1996. He has written extensively on applied microeconomics topics such as shift-work, Capital Utilization: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis (Cambridge University Press, 1981), and the distribution sector, “The Outputs of Retail Activities: Concepts, Measurement and Evidence from U.S. Census Data,” Review of Economics and Statistics (1993), as well as on development issues, “Growth, Capabilities and Development: Implications for Transition Processes in Cuba,” Economic Development and Cultural Change (1996). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1970.
BEATRIZ CASALS is President of Casals & Associates, Inc. (C&A), a Washington area-based consulting firm. For the last six years, C&A hs conducted, under contract to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the America’s Accountability and Anti-Corruption (AAA) project. Other C&A projects address similar concerns in specific countries and on a global basis.
ROLANDO H. CASTAÑEDA is currently Principal Project Specialist for the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), based in Santiago, Chile, an organization in which he has held different positions since 1974. Before joining the IDB, he worked as an economist at the Organization of American States; the Rockefeller Foundation at the University of Cali, Colombia; the University of Puerto Rico at Río Piedras; and the Puerto Rico Planning Board. He holds an M.A. and is a Ph.D. candidate at Yale University, concentrating in monetary policy and econometrics.
JOSÉ ALBERTO HERNÁNDEZ CASTILLO, M.D., is President of CubaNet. He was born in Camagüey, Cuba, in 1949 and left Cuba with his family to Miami in 1961. He graduated from the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston (UTMB) in 1975. In 1980 he started his academic career at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School (UTSW) where he became full professor. He received the Special Teaching Recognition by the UTSW medical students in 1994, and in 1999 he was awarded the Ashbel Smith Distinguished Alumnus at UTMB at Galveston.
RAMON COTO-OJEDA is partner of Coto, Malley & Tamargo, LLP, San Juan, Puerto Rico, where he heads the firm’s Alternative Dispute Resolution practice and the Cuba Team. Prior to forming his current law firm, he was a partner of McConnell Valdés where he worked since he joined the firm in 1982 as a law clerk. He graduated from Franklin & Marshall College with B.A. in Economics and obtained his law degree, cum laude, from the University of Puerto Rico School of Law where he concentrated in commercial law. Mr. Coto-Ojeda is admitted to the bars of the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, the Supreme Court of the United States and the District of Columbia Bar.
NICOLAS CRESPO is founder and President of the Phoenix Hospitality and Consulting Corporation and Latin America Hospitality and Consulting, a firms that rovides consulting services to the tourism and hospitality industry in a variety of fields. Previously, Mr. Crespo held positions as Vice President Development for Latin America and the Caribbean for Holiday Inns Inc. and Senior Vice President Latin America and the Caribbean for The Sheraton Corporation. Mr. Crespo is a graduate of Commercial Sciences from the University of Havana. His last employment in Cuba was as Controller of the Habana Hilton Hotel. Mr. Crespo is founder and President of the Cuban Society of Tourism Professionals and a charter member of the International Society of Hospitality Consultants.
ALFRED G. CUZÁN (B.A., University of Miami; M.A., Ph.D., Indiana University) is Professor of Political Science at The University of West Florida. In 1996, he received that institution’s Research and Creative Activities Award and, in 1998, a Professorial Excellence Program Award. Dr. Cuzán’s published bibliography amounts to more than thirty scholarly items, including articles published in Behavioral Science, Political Research Quarterly, Polity, Presidential Studies Quarterly, and Public Choice.
LARRY DALEY is Professor in the Department of Horticulture, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, specializing in Plant Germplasm Biochemistry and Biophysics. Earlier in his career, he held teaching positions at the University of North Texas and at East Texas State University. Born in England, Daley lived in Cuba from 1948 to 1961 in the family lands between the Guamá and Bayamo rivers in Oriente Province. During the revolution against Batista, he fought as a soldier in an assault battalion of Column 1 in the Sierra Maestra. He resigned from the rebel army in January 1959 and was arrested by the government in April 1961; he was allowed to leave Cuba after mediation by the British Embassy. He attended the Universidad de la Habana (Ingeniería Agronómica), University of Florida, Purdue University, and the University of California at Riverside, receiving his Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Biophysics from the University of California at Davis. He also conducted postdoctoral studies at Queens University in Canada, the University of Georgia, and the Boyce Thomson Institute in Yonkers, New York. Daley’s maternal surnames include García-Iñiguez, Enamorado and Ramírez, reflecting the names of a number of Cuban Wars of Independence officers.
SERGIO DÍAZ-BRIQUETS is Vice President of Casals & Associates, Inc. (C&A), a Washington areabased consulting firm. For the last six years, C&A hs conducted, under contract to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the America’s Accountability and Anti-Corruption (AAA) project. Other C&A projects address similar concerns in specific countries and on a global basis.
RICARDO DONATE-ARMADA has been a consultant at Watson Wyatt & Company in Washington for over 10 years, especializing in the valuation, accounting, and design of pension plans and other postretirement benefits. He is also an Associate of the Society of Actuaries. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982. His previous contributions at ASCE meetings related to Cuban social security, including estimates of the actuarial liabilities of the system and the burden of military and Interior Ministry pensions.
JUAN CARLOS ESPINOSA is Assistant Director of the Institute for Cuba and Cuban American Studies (ICCAS) and visiting Assistant Professor at the School of International Studies, University of Miami. He has published in the Journal of Latin American Affairs and Cuba in Transition. He specializes in Latin American politics, with a special emphasis on Cuba and the Caribbean. His principal research interests are in the areas of comparative politics, ethno- politics, and regime transition. He received the Emilio Bacardí Fellowship for Cuban Studies (1996-1997). Espinosa is the editor of ICCAS Occasional Paper Series and serves on the board of directors of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.
DANIEL FISK is Deputy Director of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis International Studies Center of the Heritage Foundation, Washington, D.C. He has held positions on the staffs of the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees and in the State and Defense Departments. He also is an Adjunct Fellow with the Americas Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.
JOSÉ ANTONIO FONT is an activist, entrepreneur and strategic advisor in finance and development. He has assisted in the establishment of several institutions promoting private enterprise and political democracy. Mr. Font received his B.A. in International Business and Economics from the School of International Service, The American University (1969) and did graduate work in Development Banking and International Finance also at The American University (1973-1975).
MARK GALLAGHER is Chief Economist at DevTech Systems, an international economic management consulting firm with one of the largest economics practices in Washington, D.C. He holds a Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University and is a specialist in political economy and public finance. He has advised the governments of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mongolia, Armenia, Tanzania, Guatemala, and Honduras, among others, on fiscal policy and administration. He has taught university level economics at George Mason University, St. John’s University in New York City, and City University of New York, as well as overseas.
RALPH J. GALLIANO is the editor of the U.S. Cuba Policy Report in Washington, DC.
GERARDO GONZÁLEZ is Professor of Economics at the Universidad Interamericana, Puerto Rico. He is an specialist on economic and international relations of Cuba and the Caribbean. His articles have appeared in specialized journals in Latin America, the United States and Europe. He is the author of The Caribbean and the Foreign Policy of Cuba (Dominican Republic, 1991) and co-author of Popular Participation and Development in Cuban Municipalities (Venezuela, 1994).
GUILLERMO GRENIER is Director, Center for Labor Research and Studies and Associate Professor of Sociology at Florida International University. He has published widely on labor and immigration issues as well as on the Cuban community in Miami. He earned his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of New Mexico.
G. DOUGLAS HARPER obtained a B.A. in history at Florida State University. He is currently a third year law student at the University of Miami School of Law.
ERNESTO HERNÁNDEZ-CATÁ is Associate Director of the African Department, International Monetary Fund (IMF). Previously, he served as Deputy Director of the IMF’s Western Hemisphere Department and of the European II Department (in charge of relations with Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union) and held other positions at the IMF and at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He received a License from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva (1967) and M.A. (1970) and Ph.D. (1974) in economics from Yale University.
ARNE C. KILDEGAARD is Associate Professor at the Escuela de Economía, Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor of Economics at the University of Mississippi. He holds a B.A. from Gustavus Adolphous College in St. Peter, Minnessota, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.
STEPHEN J. KIMMERLING is an attorney who researches and writes about legal issues surrounding U.S.-Cuban relations. He served the New York University School of Law as Cuba Conferences Director, organizing symposia at the Law School on vanguard legal issues in U.S.-Cuban affairs. Mr. Kimmerling holds a J.D. from the New York University School of Law and is a member of the New York and Florida Bars, the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, the American Society of International Law, and the Cuban-American Bar Association.
MANUEL LASAGA is President and co-founder of Strategic Information Analysis, Inc. in Miami, Florida. His professional experiences include Southeast Bank in Miami, Citicorp in New York city, and Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates in Philadelphia. He is a consultant to the Country Programs and Operations Evaluation Departments of the World Bank. Dr. Lasaga is a member of the National Association of Forensic Economics and of the Institute of Business Appraisers. He is also registered in the state of Florida as a principal of an Investment Adviser firm. He is on the Board of Directors of the Cuban Banking Study Group. Dr. Lasaga holds a Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. degree in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. In addition, he is an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Finance at the University of Miami, where he teaches courses in Corporate and International Finance.
ARMANDO LINDE is currently Deputy Secretary of the International Monetary Fund. Previously, he has served in a number of senior positions in the IMF, including that of Senior Advisor in the Western Hemisphere Department, Senior Resident Representative in India, and Chief of the River Plate Division in the Western Hemisphere Department. He did his graduate work in Economics at the University of Maryland.
ARMANDO F. MASTRAPA, III is the publisher of the Cuban Armed Forces Review Internet Web Site and a graduate of Government and Politics from St. John’s University in New York City.
GARY H. MAYBARDUK, a career Foreign Service Officer, is currently Counselor for Economic Affairs in the American Embassy in Caracas. He served as Counselor for Economic and Political Affairs in Havana from November 1997 to July 1999. Prior to Havana he served as Deputy Director for Economic Policy and Summit Coordination and Acting Director for Central American Affairs in the Bureau for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Deputy Director for the Economic Bureau’s Policy Analysis Staff, and Deputy Chief of Mission of the American Embassy in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Earlier assignments included Senior Economic Advisor and Legislative Liaison Officer both in the African Bureau, chief of the economic sections in Managua, Nicaragua and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, and Assistant Treasury Attaché, Mexico City. Dr. Maybarduk received his B.S. in economics from MIT, a M.A. in international relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, a M..S. in international security policy from the National War College and a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota.
WILLIAM A MESSINA, Jr., is Executive Coordinator of the International Agricultural Trade and Development Center (IATDC) at the University of Florida which is part of the Department of Food and Resource Economics in the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences. Mr. Messina conducts research on a variety of international trade topics, focusing primarily on U.S.-Caribbean Basin agricultural trade and trade policy issues. He is the Co-Director of the IATDC’s research initiative on Cuban agriculture, which recently received a Special Honor Award from the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture for special service to U.S. agriculture and the people of the United States. Mr. Messina also is co-principal investigator on a series of grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation supporting the Cuba research. Mr. Messina has been a consultant to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations and to a number of U.S. agricultural commodity associations. He also has been a W.K. Kellogg Foundation research fellow at the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy/Resources for the Future in Washington, D.C. Mr. Messina holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Agricultural Economics from Cornell University and a Master of Science degree in Food and Resource Economics from the University of Florida.
RICHARD A. NUCCIO served as President Clinton’s special adviser for Cuba from 1995-1996. He was also senior policy adviser to two assistant secretaries of State for Inter-American Affairs, 1993-1997. He is currently an adjunct professor at Georgetown University.
ROBERTO ORRO FERNÁNDEZ is a Lecturer- Researcher at the Escuela de Economía, Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico, a position he has held since 1995. He held a similar position at the Escuela de Economía, Universidad de la Habana, from 1989 to 1993. He received an M.A. in Economics from El Colegio de México in 1995 and a degree in economic planning from the Universidad de la Habana in 1986.
JORGE F. PÉREZ-LÓPEZ is an international economist with the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor. He is the author of Cuba’s Second Economy: From Behind the Scenes to Center Stage (Transaction Publishers, 1995), co-editor of Pespectives on Cuban Economic Reforms (Arizona State University Press, 1998) and co-author of Conquering Nature: The Environmental Legacy of Socialism in Cuba (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000). He received a Ph.D. in Economics from the State University of New York at Albany.
RENÉ PÉREZ-LÓPEZ is Vice President for Information Systems and Library Director at Virginia Wesleyan College, Norfolk, Virginia. He prepared the annual bibliographies “Current Work in Cuban Studies,” for volumes 21-28 (1991-98) of the journal Cuban Studies. He holds an M.A. in Political Science from Case Western Reserve University (1969) and an M.L.S. from the State University of New York at Albany (1971).
RICARDO A. PUERTA is a sociologist with 25 years of experience in development projects in Latin America. A graduate of Cornell University, he holds a Ph.D degree in Development Sociology. He served as Chief of the Pan American Agricultural School’s Rural Development Program; Advisor to the Small Coffee Producers’ Improvement Program in Honduras, an USAID-supported project; and Assistant Director for the Latin American Program at Private Agencies Collaborating Together (PACT) in New York, a federation of international NGOs. He is currently a Trainer for the Inter-American Development Bank and the Central American Bank for Economic Integration in project design, management and evaluation, and the Principal Consultant to the Social Accountability Program at the National Comssioner for Human Rights, in Honduras.
ENRIQUE S. PUMAR is a Senior Program Officer at the Academy for Educational Development where he currently directs two national educational projects. In addition, he is an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Program, Department of Politics, Catholic University, in Washington, D.C., and an ASCE Board Member. Dr. Pumar has published in the fields of political sociology, social theory, and socio- economic development.
MARIO A. RIVERA, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Public Administration, School of Public Administration, Anderson School of Management, University of New Mexico. Current research interests center on network economics, including the political economy of the Internet.
CHURCHILL ROBERTS is Professor of Journalism and Communications and Co-Director of the Documentary Institute at the University of Florida. He is executive director of several PBS documentaries, including “Campaign for Cuba” and “Last Days of the Revolution.”
NICHOLAS A. ROBINS is Founder and Director of the Cuban Studies Institute at Tulane University. He is co-author of the Public Interest Repot Exploring the Potential Economic Impact on New Orleans and Louisiana of Normalized Trade Relations Between the United States and Cuba, Tulane University (April 1999).
JORGE LUIS ROMEU is a Senior Engineer with IIT Research Institute, Rome, New York. Romeu took early retirement in December 1998 after teaching statistics and computer science for 14 years at the State University of New York. He holds a Licenciatura in Mathematics from the Universidad de La Habana and a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Syracuse University. He has published many articles in professional journals and received the Saaty Prize 1997 for the best article on statistics published in the American Journal of Mathematical and Management Sciences. Romeu is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and of the Institute of Statisticians (UK), and member of the ASA (U.S.), AME (Mexico) and SGAPEIO (Galicia).
JAMES E. ROSS is Courtesy Professor and Program Adviser, International Agricultural Trade and Development Center, Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences, University of Florida. He has served in his present position since retiring from the Foreign Agricultural Service in 1992. He served as Agricultural Counselor in Venezuela, Egypt, Italy and Korea. With the University of Florida, he served as Chief of Party in Costa Rica and Ghana.
JULIA SAGEBIEN is an associate professor at Dalhosuie University’s School of Business Administation in Nova Scotia, Canada. She has worked extensively on public policy and business strategy matters with the Canadian private, public and academic sectors. Dr. Sagebien holds a Ph.D. from the London School of Economics.
BENJAMIN SMITH is an international program analyst with the Bureau of International Labor Affairs, U.S. Department of Labor, currently working on programs aimed at ending abusive child labor in Central America. Previously he was a program associate at the Inter-American Dialogue and a staff writer for CubaInfo. He received an M.A. in international affairs from Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (1998) and a B.A. in international affairs from American University (1991).
FERNANDO SOCORRO is working towards a Social Science Interdisciplinary Studies MA at San Francisco State University (SFSU), which he hopes to receive in the Spring of 2000. During the coming academic year he will be acting as Webmaster for the SFSU History Students Association (HSA). Last year he served as part of the editorial staff for the HSA’s yearly publication, Ex Post Facto, and next year he will be Managing Co-editor. He has had four installments of his ongoing “Un Cubanito Chronicles” published, the most recent in Ex Post Facto’s 1999 issue.
MAURICIO SOLAÚN is Professor of Latin American social and political institutions at the University of Illinois. He served as U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua from September 1977 to February 1979, the first Cuban-American to serve as U.S Ambassador. Among his published books are Sinners and Heretics: The Politics of Military Intervention Latin America, Discrimination with Violence: Miscegenation and Racial Conflict in Latin America and Politics of Compromise: Coalition Government in Colombia. He holds degrees in law, economics and sociology from the Universidad de Villanueva, Cuba, Yale University and the University of Chicago, respectively.
JORGE A. SANGUINETTY is President of Devtech Systems, an economic consulting firm located in Washington, D.C., and Miami. In the 1960s, he was Director of the Global Investment Department of Cuba’s Central Planning Board (JUCEPLAN) and a consultant to the Ministry of the Sugar Industry. He left Cuba in 1967 and earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the City University of New York. He has taught economics at Yale University, the Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and American University in Washington, D.C.., where he founded and directed the Latin American Program on Applied Economics. He writes frequently on matters related to the Cuban economy and works on economic reform in the former Soviet Union and Central and Eastern Europe.
MARÍA F. TRUJILLO is Assistant to the Director, Cuban Studies Institute, Tulane University. She is co-author of the Public Interest Repot Exploring the Potential Economic Impact on New Orleans and Louisiana of Normalized Trade Relations Between the United States and Cuba, Tulane University (April 1999).
NELSON P. VALDÉS, Ph.D., is Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, University of New Mexico. An acknowledged expert on the Internet in Cuba, he is also a pioneer in the development of Internet resources in the United States, including the Latin American Data Base of the Latin American Institute, University of New Mexico.
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