HispanicBusiness

Bárbara J. Robles is an assistant professor of public affairs at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. She is currently a member of the Congressional Hispanic Advisory Council, whose work focuses on NAFTA and other economic issues confronting U.S. Hispanics. She has also served as a consultant for the Legislative Strengthening Initiative Program (1998), a joint University of Texas (Austin) and USAID program that offered data analysis and procedural recommendations to the Finance Committee of the El Salvador National Assembly.

Ms. Robles holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Maryland at College Park. Before joining the LBJ School, she worked as an economist for the U.S. Congress Joint Committee on Taxation and taught at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Among her recent publications are “Women in the U.S.: An Economic Profile,” in Women and Work: Race, Ethnicity, and Class (Sage Publishers, 1997); and “Latinas in the Academy: Profiling Leadership, Promoting Future Scholars,” Reflexiones (1995). She is a member of several professional organizations, including the American
Economic Association.

Since 1992 she has served on that group’s Committee on the Status of Minorities in the Profession and has helped develop strategies to encourage minorities to explore and pursue careers in economics.

Marta Tienda" border="0" />Marta Tienda is the Maurice P. During ’22 Professor of Demographic Studies, professor of sociology and public public affairs, and director of the Office of Population Research at Princeton University. She is also president of the Population Association of America for 2002. Her recent books include The Color of Opportunity (coauthor) and Youth in Cities (co-editor). She also coauthored The Hispanic Population of the United States and co-edited Divided Opportunities and Hispanics in the U.S. Economy. She is currently directing a major research project to evaluate the consequences of the Texas Top 10% Law, which guarantees admission to a public state university to all seniors who graduate in the top 10% of their high school class.

Ms. Tienda, who earned her Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has served on panels and boards for the National Academy of Sciences, the National Science Foundation, and the National Institutes of Health. She has held Guggenheim and Sackler fellowships, and currently serves on the boards of the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the W.T. Grant Foundation, and the Jacobs Foundation of Switzerland. Her teaching appointments include the University of Chicago, where she served as department chair, Stanford University (visiting), and the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Tony Villamil is CEO of the Washington Economics Group Inc., which provides strategic consulting services for corporations and institutions based in the Americas. He is also chairman of Florida’s Governor’s Council of Economic Advisors and a member of the Board of Directors of Enterprise Florida – the state’s principal public/private economic development organization.

From 1989 to 1993, Mr. Villamil was U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for Economic Affairs under President George H. Bush. More recently, he was a member of President George W. Bush’s Transition Advisory Committee on U.S. commercial and trade policies and served as director of Florida’s Office of Tourism, Trade, and Economic Development. Previously, he was Chief Economist and Special Advisor to the Secretary for the U.S. Commerce Department as well as senior vice-president and chief economist for Southeast Bank N.A. (acquired by First Union Bank). He received an M.A. in economics from Louisiana State University and an honorary Doctor of Science degree in economics from Florida International University. He has been a member of Time magazine’s Board of Economists and is author of numerous articles on Latin
American trade, the U.S. economy, and finance.