Dan Restrepo

Why organisations work with Dan Restrepo

• He sat in the White House Situation Room as the Obama administration’s point person on the Americas, and he explains U.S. policy toward the region with the authority of someone who helped write it.
• He holds a current corporate board seat at MasTec, a New York Stock Exchange-listed infrastructure group, which gives his risk analysis a boardroom register rather than a think-tank one.
• His published argument on hemispheric migration, carried in Foreign Affairs and Americas Quarterly, reframes migration as a management problem for governments and investors, not a humanitarian talking point.
• He works in English and Spanish across U.S., Latin American, and Iberian audiences, with on-air experience on CNN and CNN en Espanol that makes him effective in front of mixed-language rooms.
• Through Dinamica Americas and Restrepo Strategies he advises firms actively making investment, market-entry, and government-relations decisions across the region, so the analysis lands on live questions rather than historical ones.

Biography highlights

• Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs, National Security Council, March 2009 to July 2012, under President Barack Obama.
• Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress, focused on U.S. policy in the Americas.
• Founder and managing director, Restrepo Strategies; Founding Partner, Dinamica Americas.
• Class II Director, MasTec, Inc. (NYSE: MTZ).
• On-air contributor, CNN and CNN en Espanol; published in Foreign Affairs and Americas Quarterly.
• Named one of America’s most influential Latinos three times by Poder magazine; J.D., University of Pennsylvania Law School; former judicial clerk, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.

Biography

The U.S. relationship with Latin America has never mapped neatly onto a single policy frame. Trade, migration, narcotics, Cuba, Venezuela, and the competition for influence with China all run through the same capitals and the same meetings. For nearly six years, Dan Restrepo sat at the centre of that portfolio as President Obama’s principal advisor on the Americas, first as a campaign surrogate and then as Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council.

That experience shapes the way he advises boards and executives now. Through Restrepo Strategies and as Founding Partner of Dinamica Americas, he works with U.S. firms operating in Latin America and with Latin and Iberian firms operating in the United States. The brief is usually the same: read the political signal correctly, price it, and decide what to do about it before the market does.

Published work in Foreign Affairs and Americas Quarterly has put him on record arguing that migration in the Americas is a management challenge, not a crisis narrative, and that the tools already exist to handle it if governments choose to use them. On CNN and CNN en Espanol he translates U.S. domestic politics and hemispheric policy in both English and Spanish, which is part of why Spanish-speaking boards and U.S. leadership teams hire him for the same conversation.

His seat as a Class II Director on the board of MasTec, a listed U.S. infrastructure group, is the detail that distinguishes him from most policy voices. He has used it. The analysis buyers get is not an academic read on the region but a directorial one, tested against the kind of operational decisions boards actually make.

Key speaking topics

• U.S. policy in the Western Hemisphere
• U.S.-Mexico relations and the border
• Migration strategy across the Americas
• Political risk in Latin America
• U.S. domestic politics and its foreign policy consequences
• Investment climate and market entry in the Americas
• Cuba, Venezuela, and U.S. engagement with authoritarian regimes

Ideal for

• Boards and executive committees of firms with operations, supply chains, or expansion plans in Latin America and the Caribbean
• Chief strategy officers, heads of government affairs, and risk committees pricing Western Hemisphere exposure
• Latin American and Iberian corporates preparing for U.S. market entry, regulatory engagement, or capital raises
• Investor conferences, family offices, and financial institutions with dedicated Americas portfolios

Audience outcomes

• A clear read on where U.S. policy toward Latin America is heading and what the administration is likely to do next
• A practical framework for distinguishing political noise from decisions that will actually move capital, trade, and talent
• Specific judgment on U.S.-Mexico, migration, Venezuela, Cuba, and Brazil, delivered with the authority of someone who has negotiated in the region
• The confidence to ask sharper questions of internal country teams, local partners, and government affairs advisers