Accountability and access to public information is a safeguard against authoritarianism.

In 2005 he founded and continues to direct IBI Consultants, LLC, a national security consulting firm specializing in field research on security challenges, transnational organized crime, extra-regional actors and the rise of authoritarianism in Latin America. Its clients have included different departments of the U.S. government, NATO governments, think tanks including CSIS, the Atlantic Council and the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, and the private sector. He is the author of dozens of peer-reviewed academic studies and two books.

From September 2013 to September 2022, Farah was a contract subject-matter expert for the Department of Defense and a visiting senior fellow at the Center for Strategic Research at National Defense University. He led the Western Hemisphere Illicit Network Review Project, a nine-person regional team specializing in field research and mapping transnational criminal networks and extra-regional actors. In that capacity, he frequently briefed research findings across senior levels of the Department of Defense, interagency and intelligence communities.

Farah frequently guest lectures at universities in North and South America, as well as to senior military, government and business audiences. He has testified before Congress 15 times. For the two decades before founding IBI Consultants, he worked as a foreign correspondent and investigative reporter for The Washington Post, covering civil wars in Central America, conflict and organized crime in South America, blood diamond and gold wars in West Africa, and illicit financial flows.

Previously, Babineau served as a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Virginia and Research Coordinator for IBI Consultants. She is proficient in qualitative and quantitative methods, including text analysis and data management. Her research interests include the political economy of globalization, Latin American affairs, democratization, human rights and migration. She is particularly interested in changing global agrifood supply chains and their effects on workers. Her dissertation, “Retaking Control? Sending States and the Regulation of Temporary Labor Migration,” traced the regulation of temporary labor migration programs in American agriculture.

Her work, funded in part by the National Science Foundation, has been published by Open Democracy, the Social Science Research Council, The Brookings Institution and Harvard Business Review, as well as academic journals. She has served as a research lead on multiple large federally funded projects studying migrant farm labor in the agricultural industry on four continents. Outside academia, she has extensive experience as a human-rights investigator in U.S. agriculture and as a foreign-policy researcher specializing in Latin American affairs.

Kathryn holds a PhD in Sociology and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Virginia, and an MPhil from the University of Oxford.

Zeballos specializes in intelligence, international terrorism, emerging threats, transnational organized crime, extralegal governance and dangerous religious groups. He holds a degree in Advanced Public Security Administration and served for 20 years as an officer in the Chilean Carabineros. For more than 13 years he has worked as a consultant and field researcher in Latin America, focused on criminal dynamics and their social, political and institutional impact. For the past five years, he has served as Director for the Southern Cone region at IBI Consultants.

He was a member of the Expert Advisory Panel of Chile’s Ministry of Security on new criminal phenomena affecting the country and an advisor to the Minister of Justice and Human Rights on security and prison-crisis matters. Zeballos belongs to the NET 4U Network; the Regional Network of the Americas of Civil Society for implementation of the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime; the Center for Analysis for Democracy (CAD Latam); and the In.Visibles team, a regional platform of journalists and academics specializing in organized crime and human rights. He is also co-founder of the Research Center on Violence and Organized Crime (CIVYCO).

His responsibilities within the Collaborative include training and guidance for collaborators as requested. Zeballos is the author of three books and dozens of academic studies, newspaper columns and essays.

His work focuses on research, investigative reporting, current affairs and the development of digital platforms and content strategies. Throughout his career, Álvarez-Fernández has worked as a journalist, reporter, correspondent, producer, editor, cameraman and television director. His experience includes work with ITV Patagonia, Radio Carnaval and Radio Bío Bío, as well as correspondent assignments for the Chilean television networks MEGA and TVN.

His reporting has covered major national and international events, elections, natural disasters, social emergencies, political developments and international conflicts. He currently works at Radio Bío Bío, one of Chile’s largest national radio networks, where he hosts the overnight program Trasnoche and the evening newscast Radiograma. His work combines live reporting, interviews, news analysis, research and long-form storytelling, with particular interest in the political, social and security dynamics behind major events.

Alongside his journalistic work, Álvarez-Fernández has developed expertise as a webmaster in digital publishing, SEO, web management, social media and multimedia content production. His professional profile sits at the intersection of research, journalism and technology, using investigative methods and digital tools to develop stories, projects and platforms with a strong emphasis on information, context and public understanding.