Speaker biographies

Gustavo Coronel is a Venezuelan petroleum geologist with a career of more than thirty years in the international petroleum industry in Venezuela, the United States, Holland, and Indonesia. He has been a field geologist and founding member of the board of directors of Petróleos de Venezuela, PDVSA. Mr. Coronel is currently an energy and public policy consultant, specializing in Latin American issues. He has extensive experience in public service in his native Venezuela, having served as chief operating officer of the state-owned Guayana Development Corporation, president of the Puerto Cabello Port, and secretary of planning for the state of Carabobo, the most industrialized state in Venezuela. Mr. Coronel was elected in 1998 as a member of the Venezuelan National Congress, representing the state of Carabobo until President Hugo Chávez dissolved the Congress in 1999. He was the Venezuelan representative of Transparency International from 1996–2000, and was president of the Agropación Pro Calidad de Voda, a nongovernmental organization dedicated to civil work in Latin America. Mr. Coronel was a fellow at Harvard from 1981 to 1983, where he lectured and wrote The Nationalization of the Venezuelan Petroleum Industry, and was a professor at the graduate school of economics at the Universidad Central de Venezuela at Carácas from 1973–74.

Thor Halvorssen is a human rights advocate and film producer. He is president of the New York–based Human Rights Foundation (HRF), an organization devoted to the liberation of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners, and to the promotion of liberal democracy in the Americas. A lifelong civil liberties and civil rights advocate, Halvorssen was the first executive director and chief executive officer of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a free-speech group he headed from its founding in 1999 until he stepped down in 2004 to create HRF. He has lectured at universities across the country on matters of liberty, and his opinions and views have appeared in numerous venues, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, TIME, National Journal, and National Public Radio, as well as on television outlets such as Fox News Channel’s The O’Reilly Factor and Hannity & Colmes, MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews, HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, CNN, and many others. Halvorssen is the founder of the Moving Picture Institute and the producer of several feature films and documentaries that focus on human freedom, including Freedom's Fury (co-produced with Quentin Tarantino and Lucy Liu), Indoctrinate U, and Hammer & Tickle (2006 winner of the Zurich Film Festival). He is a contributing author to several books about freedom.

Congressman Connie Mack represents Florida's Fourteenth Congressional District, which includes the areas of Naples, Fort Myers, and Cape Coral. He was first elected in 2004 and reelected in 2006. As a member of the House International Relations Committee, Mack has worked to craft policies that spread the ideals of freedom, security, and prosperity around the world. As a member of the Western Hemisphere Subcommittee, he has become Congress’ leading critic of Venezuela’s Socialist president, Hugo Chávez, and the rapid military build-up and ever-growing anti-democratic and anti-U.S. actions of the Chávez government. Nationally, Congressman Mack understands that government does not have a revenue problem, but rather a spending problem. On the Budget Committee, he has worked to restore fiscal responsibility and to reduce wasteful spending so that people can continue to receive the services they need but at a price they can afford. Mack also serves on the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, where he has worked to address the infrastructure challenges facing southwest Florida. Congressman Mack previously served in the Florida House of Representatives from 2000–03. As a member of the Florida legislature, he established himself as a champion for mainstream conservative values and was named deputy majority leader in just his second term. Prior to being elected to Congress, Mack was a business executive with Fort Myers–based LTP Management before becoming an independent business and marketing consultant.

Roger F. Noriega is a visiting fellow at AEI, coordinating the institute’s program on Western Hemisphere issues. Twice appointed by President George W. Bush (and confirmed by the U.S. Senate) and with a ten-year career on Capitol Hill, Mr. Noriega’s breadth of experience offers strategic vision and practical insight on the Americas. As assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, Mr. Noriega managed a 3,000-person team of professionals in Washington, D.C., and fifty diplomatic posts to design and implement political and economic strategies in Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean. As U.S. ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Mr. Noriega coordinated complex and sensitive multilateral diplomacy in a thirty-four-member international organization to bolster OAS efforts to promote trade, fight illicit drugs, and defend democracy. Mr. Noriega has held various other positions, including senior policy advisor with the U.S. mission to the OAS; many program management and public affairs positions with the U.S. Agency for International Development and the U.S. Department of State; press secretary and foreign policy advisor for U.S. representative Robert Whittaker (R-Kan.); and research assistant for the secretary of state of Kansas.

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