Juan Carlos Benitez on Blogger: Entrepreneurial Training in Guam and the Northern Marianas Islands

Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Entrepreneurial Training in Guam and the Northern Marianas Islands

A member of the Trump Campaign's National Hispanic Advisory Council, Juan Carlos Benitez has experience that includes serving as the legislative director for the governor of Puerto Rico and nominating and vetting judicial minority candidates. Juan Carlos Benitez serves as president and chairman of the board of the Latte Training Academy.

A nonprofit organization established in 2013, the Latte Training Academy promotes development for the workforce in Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands. In partnership with other professional groups, the academy provides training in fields such as entrepreneurship.

The Latte Training Academy's entrepreneur training program operates through funding from the Rural Business Enterprise Grant Program of the US Department of Agriculture. In partnership with the CNMI Small Business Development Center, the Latte Training Academy provides training in business and technical areas vital for launching startups. For more information about the Latte Training Academy and its efforts to support entrepreneurs, visit www.lattetrainingacademy.com.

Over the course of his career, Mr. Benitez has served in Federal and state government positions as well as in the private sector; first as an employee and later as an entrepreneur. His experience as a labor attorney at Fiddler Gonzales and Rodriguez laid the groundwork for Mr. Benitez's successful tenure working to resolve issues of immigration discrimination in the workplace as Special Counsel for Immigration Related Unfair Employment Practice in the Civil Rights Division at the US Department of Justice. Mr. Benitez has also developed an area of expertise in the US territories and their legal relationship with the US.

Since 2003, he has served as founder and president of the Hagatna, Guam-based Washington Pacific Economic Development Group. Mr. Benitez believes in a collaborative approach to problem solving and could not find any firms that had a business model to work on policy issues the way a law firm does: hiring field experts on a case-by-base basis. Rather than contracting one firm to handle all issues with the same employees, WPEDG was founded with the idea of building a curated group of experts based on the criteria of each project. This model is geared toward returning results to the client most efficiently and scaled to their budget. Within the past four years, he has undertaken additional leading administrative positions with local firms in the areas of affordable housing development and has advocated from a pro-military / pro-island position for the deployment of Marines in the Marianas. He has also served in a volunteer capacity as board member of the Latte Training Academy, a certification program for high school students in the fields of tourism and nursing.

Juan Carlos Benitez is a native or Puerto Rico and holds a bachelor of arts in judicial systems from the Universidad del Sagrado Corazon in Santurce and a Juris Doctor from the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico School of Law in Hato Rey. He is an active member of the Puerto Rico Bar and is licensed to practice before a number of US courts, including the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico and the Supreme Court of the United States. Juan Carlos Benitez is fluent in both English and Spanish. including the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration and the US Department of Justice.