ALVARO ECHAZU
President
Expertise: Business development for the textile and fashion industry, international trade, Supply Chain Management and Logistics.
Alvaro is an Industrial Engineer and the founder and president of Import Chompas Inc; a company that introduced and owns Illimani®; a luxury clothing brand made of natural fibers such as alpaca and pima cotton. He worked with several textile manufacturers in Bolivia and Peru. He has imported to Canada and the United States and has built an extensive network of sales agencies, retailers and designers.
He has experience on investment management and securities trading. He traded stocks, bonds and future contracts and has focused on the apparel retail sector of the United States.
He holds a Master of Engineering on Engineering Management from the University of Ottawa.
RONALD ROJAS
Consultant
Expertise: International trade, Chain Production Analysis, Agricultural development, Exports Policy
Is an economist with expertise in Economic Development, International Trade and Agricultural Economics. Ronald has worked as a projects specialist, preparing and evaluating development and business projects. He conducted research for the textile sector in Bolivia and the Biofuels sector in Canada using the production chain analysis. As an economic policy advisor he worked for the Bolivian Private Sector as International Trade Director, where he analyzed trade agreements and their impact in the economy and studied national legislation and state programs related to economic affairs. He was the Bolivian private sector’s responsible for the negotiations of the Free Trade Area between the Andean Countries and the U.S. He holds an MA in Economics from Carleton University and has worked for international organizations and NGOs, such as the Inter–American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture, the Center for International Studies and Cooperation, and the Canadian Foundation for the Americas, in La Paz, Ottawa, Montreal and Conakry.
RODRIGO ESCOBAR
Consultant
Bachelor in Business Administration. MBA at HEC Montreal with major in Marketing and Logistics. He worked for many multinational companies in tasks related to product management, branding, logistics, project management, preparation of budgets, cash flow and financial reporting. He was in charge of the Financial Department of a non-profit organization related to education, training and culture. Expert in Microsoft Excel modeling. He speaks English, French and Spanish.
ADRIANA MENDEZ
Consultant
Expertise: Environmental engineering (water quality and management), greenhouse gas accounting, project management
Adriana Mendez is an environmental engineer with extensive experience in greenhouse gas accounting (projects and inventories) as well as water quality engineering. She has supported over 25 demonstration projects involving multiple stakeholders (small to medium companies, government, academia, NGOs, etc) and different technologies. She recently completed a Master of Engineering in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology(MIT) with her thesis fieldwork done in Singapore, consisting in using innovative passive samplers to test the water for organic compounds in order to trace sewage. The main goal was to help Singapore optimize its water resources in the wake of limited water resources and climate change
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