Partnership Development
Strategic consulting for U.S.-Latin America institutional relationships
Most international partnerships are built on goodwill and improvisation. They launch well, then quietly stall — undermined by leadership transitions, funding gaps, or the slow erosion of trust that happens when institutions don't actually understand each other.
Part of what they don't understand is this: in Latin America, things get done relationally, not transactionally. Confianza — trust built slowly, through presence, consistency, and genuine investment in the relationship — is not a soft skill. It is the infrastructure. Institutions that treat it as optional tend to find out why it isn't.
The problem is rarely lack of effort. It's lack of structural fluency.
I work with universities, foundations, and government agencies navigating the complexity of U.S.–Latin America collaboration. My approach draws on over a decade of applied partnership work and a PhD in Latin American history to help institutions build relationships that are durable, equitable, and grounded in a clear-eyed understanding of how power shapes cooperation across the Americas.
Who this is for
This work is for organizations operating at the intersection of the United States and Latin America, where the stakes are real and the relationships are complicated.
You might be a foundation funding cross-border initiatives that keep stalling in implementation. A government agency or trade office trying to build durable connections in a market you don't fully understand yet. A chamber of commerce or economic development organization navigating the cultural and institutional complexity of the U.S.–Mexico corridor. A company entering the Mexican market and discovering that goodwill alone doesn't hold a partnership together.
What you have in common: you need someone who knows how this region actually works. Not from a distance, but from inside it.
How I work
I don't parachute in. I'm based in Mérida, Yucatán, embedded in the binational networks I work within. That means I bring current, on-the-ground intelligence rather than a framework built from somewhere else.
My approach is structured around three things: understanding the institutional landscape of your specific context, identifying the relationships that matter and the ones that are missing, and building the systems and strategies that make collaboration durable rather than dependent on any one person or moment.
Engagements typically begin with a discovery conversation to assess where you are and where the gaps are. From there I work in focused, project-based scopes including market intelligence, partnership development strategy, stakeholder mapping, and ongoing advisory support.
Ready to talk?
If you're building across the Americas and need someone who knows the terrain, I'd like to hear about what you're working on. Let’s talk.