President & CEO - Diego Area is the President and CEO of Global Americans. Previously, he spent six years at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, leading strategic development efforts and securing partnerships with Fortune 500 companies, foundations, and governments. His work focused on advancing hemispheric cooperation in energy security, great power competition, trade and investment, technology, and health.

At the intersection of security and democracy, Diego spearheaded major initiatives addressing geostrategic rivalry in the Western Hemisphere. His leadership also extended to launching key initiatives in Venezuela, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, the Dominican Republic, and Europe. Before joining the Atlantic Council, he worked as a graduate research assistant at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management.

Forced to leave Venezuela, Diego had played a pivotal role in electoral politics. As campaign manager for the 2015 parliamentary elections, he led a successful strategy that flipped a historically pro-Maduro district in Caracas. Before that, he was actively involved in local, regional, and national campaigns, leading voter mobilization and digital grassroots engagement.

Simultaneously, he held leadership roles in the municipality of Sucre in Caracas, empowering underserved communities to achieve prosperity and self-sufficiency without government dependence. He launched a college scholarship program that awarded over 1,200 scholarships to low-income students, helped local entrepreneurs establish daycare centers for more than 2,500 children, implemented a dispute resolution program to prevent violence in high-crime areas, and created an initiative to secure low-interest loans for young entrepreneurs.

Diego’s commitment to defending individual liberties and fighting against authoritarianism earned him George Washington University’s “Guardian of Democracy” award and a fellowship with the National Endowment for Democracy’s Penn Kemble Forum on Democracy. In Venezuela, he led the creation of the Venezuelan Federation of Students of Political Science (FEVECIPOL) and founded “Héroes del Futuro,” an initiative supporting underserved youth.

He holds a master’s degree in political management from George Washington University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the Universidad Central de Venezuela.

Since 2018, Diego has called Washington, D.C., home, where he lives with his wife, Veronica, and their daughter, Celeste.