Location: DACOR Bacon House OR Online, 1801 F Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006
Event Description
Please note this is a hybrid event - you have the option to attend in person or virtually. Registrations are required for all attendees. For in-person attendees, the event will run from 12 - 2 pm and will include lunch. The live stream will begin shortly after 1 pm (virtual attendees will be sent a link for the event via email).
The next session of DACOR's Latin America & Caribbean Discussion Group will be a timely, important discussion on the growing violence and political breakdown in Haiti and what the international community can and should do to restore security and, eventually, enable elections.
Our distinguished panelists will be:
Ms. Barbara Feinstein, Deputy Assistant Secretary for Caribbean Affairs and Haiti, in the Department of State's Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs;
Dr. Jean Philippe Austin, Board Chairman, Haitian-American Foundation for Democracy;
Ambassador Juan Gabriel Valdes, Chilean Ambassador to the United States and former special representative of the Secretary General of the United Nations and chief of the United Nations Mission MINUSTAH in Haiti.
Barbara A. Feinstein, a career member of the Senior Executive Service, is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Caribbean Affairs and Haiti. Ms. Feinstein most recently served as Deputy Assistant Administrator for Caribbean Affairs, Haiti, Cuba, Mexico, and Central America with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). She has held various leadership positions with USAID, including as Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for Legislative Affairs; Deputy Chief of Staff to Administrator Rajiv Shah, Chief of Staff and Senior Policy Advisor to Acting Administrator Alonzo Fulgham; and Special Assistant to Administrator Henrietta Fore. Other assignments include service with the U.S. Departments of State and Defense.
Ms. Feinstein has served on the professional staff of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State and Foreign Operations and the House International Relations Committee of the United States Congress.
She holds a Master’s degree in International and Public Affairs from Princeton University and a Bachelor of Arts in Latin American Studies, Spanish and Portuguese from the University of California-Berkeley.
Ms. Feinstein speaks Spanish and Portuguese.
Dr. Jean-Philippe Austin left Haiti at the age of 9 and moved to Queens, New York joining his parents, who escaped Papa Doc Duvalier’s bloody dictatorship. Growing up in NY’s community of Haitian exiles, Jean-Phillipe was immersed in a world where ideals of social justice and democracy were uplifted. Jean-Philippe attended New York University majoring in Economics. Upon graduation he attended medical school at the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn.
Later, Jean Philippe, his wife Maggie Desroches Austin and their 4 daughters moved from New Orleans to South Florida, and quickly became renown civically engaged philanthropists. While his professional career thrived, Jean-Phillipe’s commitment to social justice and political empowerment endured.
He was a member of President Obama’s National Finance Committee and the Florida Finance Chair for the Democratic National Committee. He has hosted both First Lady, Michele Obama and the President at his home in South Florida.
His unwavering commitment to his community is evidenced by memberships to Boule, a national organization of prominent African Americans and the Florida Alliance, Progressive donor table. His notion of community expanded as he became increasingly immersed in South Florida’s Haitian community, home to over 500,000 Haitians and Haitian Americans.
While living in Miami, Jean-Phillipe found it difficult to ignore Haiti focused social and political issues which consumed the Haitian community’s passion. This interaction reignited his commitment to Haiti and its ongoing crises. Always in search of solutions, Jean-Phillipe understood that strengthening the Haitian Diaspora’s political power in the US, was a critical path to addressing Haiti’s problems.
Recognizing that the Haitian American Diaspora has been weakened by mistrust and misunderstanding he is committed to providing through HAFFD, a path to a well-organized, educated and activated Diaspora. He has no doubt that as Haitian-Americans build and channel their collective power, they will become a force that will affect change both in the US and in Haiti.
Ambassador Juan Gabriel Valdés is the Ambassador of Chile to the U.S.
He studied law at the Catholic University of Chile and holds a PhD in Political Science from Princeton University. He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Latin American Studies at Princeton University and at the Kellogg Institute for International Relations at the University of Notre Dame.
He was Minister of Foreign Affairs during the government of President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations and Ambassador of Chile to Spain, Argentina and the United States. He was also Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Head of the UN Mission in Haiti, and a member of the UN High-Level Advisory Board on Mediation.
In the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, he also served as Director of International Economic Relations between 1996 and 2000, during which time the negotiations leading to the Chile-US Free Trade Agreement were initiated. He was also negotiator of the Free Trade Agreement with Canada.
He also directed the Chile-Imagen País Project and the Fundación Imagen de Chile and coordinated the programme of the Latin American Council on International Relations (RIAL), which operates at the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC).
