LISSA REE WEINMANN
Director, The Cuba Project

Expertise: Cuba; Cuba embargo; U.S. policy toward Cuba

Experience

Ms. Weinmann is a writer and communications/political consultant with a diverse portfolio of national and international public affairs work. Ms. Weinmann directs the Cuba Project at the World Policy Institute, where she coordinates a national educational program on how US policy toward Cuba impacts US national interests as well as Cuba itself. She organized the first National Summit on Cuba in 2002 and its follow-up, the Florida Summit on Cuba, in 2003. The summits bring together viewpoints from across the country —with a special emphasis on the Cuban-American community —to discuss the creation of a Cuba policy that can better address US national security and the needs of Cubans and Americans alike.

 

Ms. Weinmann is executive director, founder, and member of the board of directors of the first national coalition of prominent Americans working to normalize food and medical trade with Cuba: Americans for Humanitarian Trade with Cuba, formed in January 1998. Before focusing on Cuba, she was vice president of one of the top crisis communications firms in the United States, Abernathy MacGregor Inc., New York, where she specialized in developing public affairs campaigns requiring grassroots mobilization efforts and the coordination of Republican and Democratic forces.

 

She has worked in Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, and Colombia as a journalist, photographer, and media and political consultant. She earned a BS in journalism at the Newhouse School at Syracuse University and a master of international affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University. She is working on a book about US-Cuba relations.

 

 
Directs national education effort to inform US audiences on the domestic impact of the 40-year US embargo on Cuba and currently working on book regarding same; founder and Communications Director of Americans For Humanitarian Trade With Cuba (AHTC), the first-ever national coalition of prominent Americans calling for an end to the food and medicine embargo on Cuba; a Vice President in Latin American communications strategy at Abernathy MacGregor Frank, working on behalf of Mexican, Venezuelan, and Peruvian clients; worked with the Consejo Regional Indigena del Cauca in Colombia studying effect of drug trade and eradication efforts on native communities; Programming Director for Columbia University's Latin American Institute; reporter/writer for various New York City magazines and newspapers. She has spoken in various domestic and international forums as an expert in US-Cuba policy. 

 

 

Honors & Affiliations 
Member of the Americas Society and Women in International Trade 

 

 

Education 
M.I.A., emphasis on political economy and Latin America, School of

     International and Public Affairs, Columbia University 
B.S. in Journalism, The Newhouse School of Public Communication,

     Syracuse University 

 

 

Languages
Fluent in Spanish 

 

 

Contact weinmann(at)worldpolicy.org

 

 

ARTICLES

Foreign Policy in Focus published "Getting Smart about Cuba," March 7, 2008.

"Washington’s Irrational Cuba Policy," World Policy Journal, Vol. 21, No. 1, 2004.

 

LECTURES & APPEARANCES

Ms. Weinmann spoke at the American Public Health Association annual meeting, November 4-8, 2006, Boston, MA.