About the speakers

Colin T. Bird, Consul General of Canada in Detroit

Colin Bird (ALB Hons [Government Studies], Harvard University, 1994; LLB Hons, University of Ottawa, 2003) joined Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada in 2009. He has served as counsel to the NAFTA Secretariat and in the department’s Trade Law Bureau, where he focused on trade remedies and aerospace and softwood lumber trade issues, and he was a director in the North America Bureau of the Trade Negotiations Branch. Until 2019, Mr. Bird served as minister-counsellor for trade and economic policy at the embassy in Washington, D.C., where he was responsible for all aspects of the United States-Canada trade relationship, including the 2 countries’ cooperation in multilateral forums. He has also represented Canada before dispute settlement panels and the Appellate Body at the World Trade Organization. Most recently, he was the executive director in the Trade Policy Branch responsible for multilateral trade matters, particularly Canada’s membership in the World Trade Organization, and served as Canada’s senior trade official at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, where he chaired the Trade Committee, and at the G7 and G20.

Roberto Nicolas Vazquez, Consul General of Mexico in Detroit

Roberto Nicolás Vázquez has been a member of the Mexican Foreign Service since 2007 and currently serves as the Consul of Mexico in Detroit, a position he has held since April 2022. Prior to this role, he was the Coordinator of Political Affairs for the North American Desk at the Mexican Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 2020 to 2022. From 2017 to 2020, he served as Director for U.S. Political Affairs within the same division. Earlier in his diplomatic career, Vázquez was Deputy Consul of Mexico in Orlando from 2012 to 2017. Before that, he held two positions at the Consulate General of Mexico in Dallas—first as Consul for Protective Services from 2008 to 2012, and earlier as Consul in Charge of Community Affairs from 2007 to 2008. His service also includes a role as Deputy Representative of the Mexican Immigration Bureau at Mexico City International Airport from 2005 to 2007. Vázquez holds a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM). He has also completed several specialized diplomas, including a Diploma on Immigration Policy from the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (CIDE-KAS, 2021), a Diploma on Mexican Communities from the Instituto de los Mexicanos en el Exterior, and a Diploma on International Law from the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México.