Visiting Scholar

Ricardo Tavares

CEO, TechPolis, Inc.

Bio

Ricardo Tavares has extensive experience in policy research, international management and strategic consulting in the mobile telecommunications and technology industries. Tavares holds a masters degree in political science from the Rio de Janeiro University Research Institute (Iuperj) and completed course work at the Ph.D. level at the University of California, San Diego's School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS).

Tavares is senior vice president for public policy at the GSM Association, the world trade association of mobile phone operators, and CEO of TechPolis, Inc., an international consulting company focused on mobile telecommunications. He has consulted extensively on mobile telecommunications and information technology regulation in emerging markets, including Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Costa Rica, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, and Vietnam, as well as European Union and US international telecommunications policies toward emerging economies.

Tavares is a member of the Board of Regents of the Harris Manchester College at Oxford University in the UK. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York, the Pacific Council for International Policy in Los Angeles, and a member of the International Advisory Council of the Salk Institute for Biological Research in La Jolla.

Tavares was senior director of International Operations at Wireless Facilities, Inc. (WFI) from 1999 to 2003. During his term at WFI, Mr. Tavares managed wireless deployment projects in Latin America and was general manager of WFI's Brazil office for two years.

He lives in Rancho Santa Fe, California, USA with his wife and two children.

Research & Publications

Earlier in his career as a researcher and editor at one of Brazil’s largest non-governmental organizations, FASE, in Rio de Janeiro, from 1988 through 1992 Tavares wrote extensively about rural social movements in agro-industrial commodity industries in Brazil and their broader implications for democratic transition. He also researched and wrote on the North American Free Trade Agreement’s (NAFTA) negotiations in the U.S. Congress (1993) and the Washington politics related to the US response to the Mexican peso crisis (1994). Lately, Tavares has focused his work on the political economy of global technology industries.

His academic and non-academic publications include:

“An Overvirew of Digital Television in Brazil” (Um panorama da TV digital: Aspecto comercial deve prevalecer na escolha do padrao), Gazeta Mercantil, São Paulo, May 15, 2006, p. A3 (http://www.techpolis.com/Digital_tv_english.htm).

“The Political Economy of Telecommunications Privatization and Regulation in Brazil,” Folha de São Paulo, May 2, 1999 (interview with Gilson Schwartz).

“Brazil: Telecommunications Regulation after Privatization,” Institute of the Americas Working Paper, La Jolla, CA, November 1998.

“A Fix for Ailing Emerging Economies,” San Diego Union Tribune, Opinion Page, October 13, 1998.

“Where U.S. Companies Seek Regulation,” San Diego Union Tribune, Opinion Page, July 25, 1997.

“The U.S. Response to the Mexican Peso Crisis: Domestic Politics and Global Markets,” Maryland Seminar on U.S. Foreign Policymaking, Working Paper No. 2, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 1995.

“Land and Democracy—Reconsidering the Agrarian Question [in Brazil],” NACLA Report on the Americas, Vol. XXVIII, No. 6, May/June 1995, pp. 23-29.

“The World Bank and NGOs,” [O Banco Mundial e as ONGs], FASE, Rio de Janeiro, 1994, pp.1-38.

“The Move Toward Economic Blocs: Where Does Brazil Stand?” Contato, Brazil Network, Washington, D.C., Vol.VI, No.7/8, December, 1993.

“Monarchy or Republic?” Contato, Brazil Network, Washington, D.C., Vol.VI, No.2, March, 1993.

“NAFTA: The New and the Old Protectionism,” [NAFTA: O Novo e o Velho Protecionismo], Políticas Governamentais, vol. IX, n. 97, November-December 1993, IBASE, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, pp. 24-27.

“Black Candidate, White Fear: The Rio Mayoral Election and the Media,” Contato, Brazil Network, Washington, D.C., Vol.V, No.7/8, November, 1992.

“Agrarian Reform and Counter-Reform in Brazil’s Political Transition (1979-1988),” [Reforma e Contra-Reforma Agrária na Transição Política—Brasil 1979-1988], Iuperj Série Estudos, no. 70, May 1989, 47 pages.