Three cases. One through-line:
policy that accounts for culture.
These engagements span trade enforcement, archaeological preservation, and multilateral conservation. In each, the strategic challenge was the same — translating high-level international obligations into outcomes that hold at the local level.
Totoaba Trafficking & the Vaquita:
When Trade Law Becomes Conservation
The near-extinction of the vaquita porpoise in Mexico's Gulf of California is not primarily a biology problem. It is a trade enforcement failure — one that reveals the structural gap between the obligations states sign in international agreements and their capacity to deliver compliance at the community level.
Supporting initiatives within the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, I analyzed how Chapter 24 of the USMCA functions as a mechanism of international accountability — and where that mechanism breaks down. The core finding: enforcement fails not for lack of law, but for lack of local institutional capacity and market intelligence upstream.
Strategic Analytical Pillars
- Trade as Leverage How USTR consultation requests create diplomatic pressure for environmental compliance — and the conditions under which that pressure holds.
- The Behind-the-Border Variable Why local enforcement in the Gulf of California fails despite binding international commitments — and what structural interventions can close the gap.
- Supply Chain Intelligence Mapping Asian market demand for totoaba swim bladders to on-the-ground ecological outcomes in Mexican marine zones.
Sacred Cave Systems & the Limits
of Development: A Belize Feasibility Study
The Belizean government identified a cave system of significant Maya archaeological and biological value. The strategic question was not whether to develop it — it was whether development was possible without destroying the thing that made it valuable.
I led the U.S.–Belize technical exchange, directing a multidisciplinary team of archaeologists and biologists to conduct an integrated site assessment. The deliverable was a government-endorsed feasibility study and infrastructure roadmap — a "Go / No-Go" framework calibrated to preservation thresholds, economic projections, and the irreplaceable nature of non-renewable heritage assets.
Strategic Framework
- Value vs. Risk Analysis Quantifying the economic upside of tourism development against the non-renewable cost of heritage degradation — building a replicable framework for similar sites across the region.
- Risk Mitigation Mapping Designing physical access routes that preserved ecological and archaeological integrity while enabling meaningful visitor engagement.
- Standards Transfer Facilitating knowledge transfer from Department of Interior technical experts to Belizean counterparts, embedding international conservation standards into national practice.
The Maya Forest Portfolio:
Building Institutions That Outlast Their Funders
High-level conservation policy is only as durable as the local institutions tasked with implementing it. The Maya Forest — spanning three national jurisdictions — is one of the most ecologically significant and politically complex conservation territories in the Western Hemisphere. Managing a $36M trinational portfolio within it required more than project management. It required building the social and technical infrastructure that would allow local organizations to lead independently, regardless of external political shifts.
My role was to function as the strategic bridge between executive-level advocacy and community-level capacity. That meant aligning the expectations of government ministries across three countries, satisfying the transparency requirements of international funders, and ensuring that local NGOs and cooperatives had the operational infrastructure to manage and report on international funds without external dependency.
The result: full audit compliance, modernized data reporting systems, and a stabilized regional partnership that remained functional through periods of political transition in two countries.
Capabilities Demonstrated
- Multilateral Stakeholder Alignment Coordinating across government ministries, local NGOs, and international funders in three jurisdictions — simultaneously managing divergent political priorities and shared ecological mandates.
- Diplomatic Review & Correspondence Providing substantive editorial and strategic review of formal communications to people in positions of influence and power, aligning conservation priorities with national policy frameworks.
- Institutional Resilience Building Auditing organizational workflows and modernizing reporting systems across local partner organizations, ensuring continued capacity independent of external political conditions.
- Data Storytelling for International Stakeholders Transforming field audit data into interactive visualizations and public narratives that demonstrated measurable program ROI to international funding bodies.
