Gustavo Sierra
International news editor for Clarín newspaper (Argentina)
Sierra is a journalist with 30 years experience in the profession. He has worked as a correspondent for several Argentine and international news organizations in London, New York, Washington, Los Angeles, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile. He was a member of the team that initiated service of CNN en Español in Atlanta; White House correspondent for NBC-Canal de Noticias and CBS-Telenoticias; correspondent in Chile and Argentina for Univision—the first Hispanic U.S. television network; and editor of the Latin American service of the Associated Press in New York. Today, Sierra is a war correspondent and editor and the international news editor for Clarín newspaper in Buenos Aires, Argentina, covering the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He is also the host of Babel del Siglo XXI, a TV news show for channel América24. His works can be seen in multimedia on Clarín.com.
Joel Simon
Executive Director, Committee to Protect Journalists
Simon began his career as a writer and photographer based in Central America, focusing on Guatemala’s civil war. He moved to Mexico City in 1989 where he worked as an associate editor for Pacific News Service and as a freelance writer and photographer. From 1991 to 1994, Simon was based in San Francisco and worked as a contributing editor to SFWeekly. He returned to Mexico in 1994 to report on the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas for the San Francisco Chronicle. Simon’s book on Mexico’s environmental crisis, “Endangered Mexico: An Environment on the Edge,” was published in 1997. He has a masters degree in Latin American studies from Stanford University.
Michael Smith
Bloomberg Markets
Based in Santiago, Chile, Smith is responsible for coverage of Latin America for Bloomberg Markets magazine. Smith, a University of North Carolina graduate, has been with Bloomberg since 1992, covering financial and general news both domestically and abroad. Smith’s awards include a George Polk Award for Health Reporting and the Investigative Reporters and Editors prize for a 2005 story about the use of poor immigrants to test experimental pharmaceutical drugs. For a 2006 story on the use of slave labor to make materials that go into consumer goods, Smith received an Overseas Press Club citation, SPJ’s Sigma Delta Chi award, the Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism award, as well as ten other national and international awards. Smith started his career in Chile as a freelance journalist covering the fall of General Augusto Pinochet’s regime. He then went to the Daily Record in Morristown, New Jersey and then the Associated Press in Newark.
Paul Steiger
Editor-in-Chief, ProPublica
Chair, Committee to Protect Journalists
Paul Steiger is president and editor-in-chief of ProPublica, a New York-based non-profit newsroom focused on investigative journalism, a position he assumed beginning January 2008. Steiger was previously editor-at-large at The Wall Street Journal, having stepped down in May 2007 from a 16-year stint as managing editor and vice president of Dow Jones & Company. Steiger joined the Journal in 1966 as a reporter in the San Francisco bureau. In 1968, he moved to the Los Angeles Times as a staff writer and in 1971 he transferred to that paper’s Washington, D.C. bureau as an economic correspondent. He returned to Los Angeles in 1978 to serve as the Times’ business editor. Steiger was elected chairman of the Committee to Protect Journalists in 2005. The same year, Steiger was honored with the “Decade of Excellence” award from the World Leadership Forum. Born in New York City, Steiger graduated from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in economics.
Tom Trebat
Executive Director, Institute of Latin American Studies, SIPA
Trebat is the executive director of the Institute of Latin American Studies and also directs the Institute’s Center for Brazilian Studies. He joined Columbia after a lengthy career on Wall Street dedicated to economic research on Latin America. Prior to joining ILAS in February 2005, Trebat was managing director and head of the Latin America team in the economic and market analysis department of Citigroup. He joined Citicorp Securities in 1996 as the head of Emerging Market Research. Previously, he worked at Bankers Trust, the Ford Foundation, and Chemical Bank. As a senior international economist at Bankers Trust, he was involved in many aspects of country debt negotiations in Brazil, Chile, Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America during the 1980s. At the Ford Foundation, he served for four years as the regional director for Latin America and Caribbean Programs. At Chemical Bank, Trebat organized and directed the emerging markets research group. Trebat has a Ph.D in economics from Vanderbilt University and remains active in teaching and publishing. He is also a member of the Council of Foreign Relations. His book, “Brazil’s State-owned Enterprises: A Case Study of the State as Entrepreneur,” was published by Cambridge University Press in 1983.
Ricardo Trotti
Director of Press Freedom, Inter American Press Association and IAPA Press Institute Director
Trotti is an Argentine journalist and has been a columnist and blogger for several Latin American newspapers. He is a former news editor of El Liberal in Santiago del Estero, Argentina, and former assistant editor of El Nuevo Herald, Miami, Florida, and visiting professor at the Journalism College of Córdoba, Argentina. He is an author of numerous works on press freedom, including “The Painful Freedom of the Press: In Search of Lost Ethics.” He is the recipient of numerous awards: IAPA Grand Prize for Freedom of the Press, and three time winner of the Argentinean Newspaper Association Press Freedom Award.