Ryan C. Berg is Director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is also an adjunct professor at the Catholic University of America and Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Changing Character of War Programme. His research focuses on U.S.-Latin America relations, authoritarian regimes, strategic competition and extra-hemispheric actors, and trade and development issues. He also studies Latin America’s criminal groups. Previously, Dr. Berg was a Research Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he helped lead its Latin America Studies Program. Dr. Berg has served as a research consultant to the World Bank, a Fulbright scholar in Brazil, and a Visiting Doctoral Fellow at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. He has lived and worked in Peru and Brazil and is an expert member of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime and the Urban Violence Research Network. Dr. Berg obtained a Ph.D. and an M.Phil. in political science and an M.Sc. in global governance and diplomacy from the University of Oxford, where he was a Senior Hulme fellow. Earlier, he obtained a B.A. in government and theology from Georgetown University. He is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and has a working knowledge of French and Slovenian.