Juan Pablo Toro

Juan Pablo Toro is the Executive Director of AthenaLab, a Chilean think tank dedicated to International Relations, Security and Defense, with special emphasis on issues in the Americas, Asia-Pacific and Antarctica.

After more than two decades of working as a journalist in different countries and teaching at several national universities, he has concentrated his knowledge on politics and security in Latin America, as well as on geopolitical issues of the Asia-Pacific, irregular conflicts and drug trafficking. While his multiple trips have taken him from Singapore to the coast of Somalia, his journalistic activity also allowed him to make contact with leaders across the world.

He was previously International Editor of the Chilean newspaper, El Mercurio; Editor-in-Chief of the El Mercurio de Valparaíso; News Editor of the Associated Press in Mexico and correspondent for the Associated Press in Colombia. He has been Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Communications at the Catholic University of Chile since 2015. His articles have appeared in newspapers in the Americas and he has also published in specialised magazines such as Foreign Affairs in Spanish.

He was awarded an M.A. in Political Science and a B.A. in Journalism from the Catholic University of Chile. He also holds a National Security Diploma from the Mexico Autonomous Institute of Technology and is a graduate of the Strategy and Defense Policy course at the Center for Hemisphere Defense Studies.