Carlo Dade

Carlo Dade is a senior fellow at the School for International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa, where he focuses on the role of private-sector actors in international development and development aspects of security-sector reform. He was most recently executive director of the Canadian Foundation for the Americas (FOCAL), Canada's only think tank focused on the western hemisphere, where he also managed programs in transnationalism/diasporas, corporate social responsibility, and Canadian engagement in Haiti. Prior to FOCAL, he was representative for the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and the English-speaking Caribbean at the Inter-American Foundation, a U.S. government foreign-aid agency where he managed a community grant and business social investment co-financing portfolio. Mr. Dade was a founding member of the Enterprise Research Institute and Foundation for Latin America, a Washington, D.C. private-sector development and corporate social responsibility think tank. He worked for five years in the Latin American and Caribbean Region Technical Department of the World Bank.

Mr. Dade is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen who holds a BA in International Affairs with a minor in Middle Eastern Studies from the University of Virginia, was a MA candidate at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University, and spent two summers at Yarmouk University in Irbid, Jordan.

Mr. Dade authored a study on business-NGO relations in Chile and articles on business and education in Latin America, and co-authored a manuscript on business and social responsibility in Latin America. He has negotiated businesses-NGO partnerships for social-investment projects in the tourism, agricultural, financial-services, extractive, and manufacturing sectors. He has convened and led CSR conferences in Haiti, Trinidad, and Tobago and served as U.S. government representative to the organizing committee of the first Summit of the Americas mandated CSRAmericas conference.

Mr. Dade organized the first conference examining development uses of remittances, co-sponsored by IAF, the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the World Bank, entitled “Approaches to Increasing the Productive Value of Remittances,” in May 2001. He wrote the first USAID Internal White Paper on Remittances and Development. While at FOCAL, he designed and carried out numerous research projects on diaspora and remittance issues including "A Survey of Remittance Recipients in Jamaica, the role of Diasporas from Asia and Latin America in Job Creation in Their Communities of Origin." He has organized a series of meetings in U.S. cities bringing together local community foundations, diaspora and hometown associations, and U.S. foreign-assistance agencies and organized the first regional conference on the Role of the Diaspora in the Development of Haiti in June 2000, which shared experience between El Salvador, Mexico, and Haiti in developing policies to work with diasporas. He has assisted in the organization of first meetings of diaspora ministers from India, Haiti, Morocco, the Philippines, and Mexico, and later the first convocation of diaspora ministers in the Americas.

Mr. Dade is a frequent commentator in the Canadian media and a witness in Parliament on issues related to Latin America ranging from Bill C-300 to free-trade agreements.