alition, said Vorwerk has demon-strated unflappable patience in keeping the diverse group on track.

“She cares about it, and it’s personal and important to her,” he said.

Vorwerk, who has traveled ex-tensively to the island nation and was there during President Obama’s visit in March, said, “This trip was different because it gave the United States and Cu-ba a chance to look at each other like they hadn’t before.

“There was clearly excitement on the ground from the Cuban people embracing the United States,” she said. “You’re in the moment realizing we’re in the middle of something very real. Change is inevitable.”

Vorwerk is upbeat on the fu-ture of the U.S.-Cuban relation-ship, with Congress leaning ever closer to ending the embargo.

“I can’t surmise how politics will even end up in the U.S., so I’m not going to surmise how it ends up in Cuba,” Vorwerk said.

“What I can say is that enor-mous social change can come as a result of economic change, and we’re already starting to see that.”

She’s also turned her attention toward keeping the dialogue flowing on the TPP as uncer-tainty swirls around the trade deal’s future on Capitol Hill.

“If not this, then what?” Vor-werk said of TPP. “If the U.S. chooses not to engage and not to negotiate these kind of deals, then where would we be left?” she said.

“The rest of the world will be moving on, and we will be stunt-ing our ability to grow.”

But it’s not Vorwerk’s style to box people in — quite the oppo-site. She says she wants to hear the fears and criticisms in honest discussions about trade policy.

“You give policymakers what they need to make a decision and get to the right conclusion for their constituents and for the country,” Vorwerk said.

Recently, Vorwerk got a sur-prise dose of validation.

In a flurry of spring cleaning, she unearthed a couple of high school civics papers she wrote on the benefits of foreign aid and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

“As I was reading it I was think-ing, I hope this ends in the right way in terms of where I am to-day,” she said. “Sure enough, sup-porting foreign aid as the abil-ity to enhance people’s lives and standards of living, and NAFTA is a good thing,” she said.

“So I laughed because even in my unconscious state in high school I was being directed to-ward this field.”

TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 2016 THEHILL.COM

By Vicki Needham

evry Boughner Vorwerk always seemed destined for a career that

would meld her love of agriculture with international trade policy.DGrowing up in what she calls “Steinbeck country” in rural California, Vorwerk joined Fu-ture Farmers of America as a cure for the slow pace of small-town life, a decision that would later steer her toward globetrot-ting jobs navigating trade and investment barriers from Asia to Latin America.

But it was a single college course in agricultural policy — taught by a professor who knew the ins and outs of Washington — that truly hooked the Akin Gump senior policy adviser.

“The seeds were planted and the field grew,” Vorwerk said dur-ing an interview with The Hill.

Vorwerk went on to major in agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis, because, as she says, “Food has to be traded across borders.”

Then she headed east to Cor-nell for her master’s degree, focusing on public policy and international trade. She even passed up a full ride for her doc-torate for the complex world of trade policy in Washington.

She started off at the World Bank, then moved to the Inter-national Trade Commission and the Office of the U.S. Trade Rep-resentative, where she gained insight into the nuts and bolts of trade negotiations.

In 2004, Vorwerk landed a position at the global firm Car-gill, where she would work for a dozen years crisscrossing the globe, from China to India to Cuba, building a reputation not only as a consensus-builder but

as someone quick to read the tea leaves on the trade scene.

Despite a lack of on-the-ground experience in Asia, Vorwerk soon recognized a new trade relation-ship blossoming, one that would eventually build into the “snow-ball in the Pacific” — the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

The area radiated with oppor-tunity. Each time she returned to countries such as China, there was what she called the “Asian buzz.”

“You’d land on the ground, and it would never stop,” Vorwerk said.

She urged the United States to join the burgeoning deal and in-sisted the agreement wouldn’t be complete without Japan, the last country to get on board with the 12-nation agreement, which was signed in February.

“If the U.S. is not engaged and the TPP gains momentum, then it’s a lost opportunity,” she said.

While Vorwerk eagerly awaited the U.S. decision to join the TPP, she brushed off anyone calling her “crazy” for thinking Japan, Mexico and Canada could team up on the sweeping global pact with the United States.

“I tend to be an optimist on pol-icy,” she said. “It’s like a wave. You have to get on it now, and you have to ride it or be hit by it,” she said.

Dave MacLennan, Cargill’s CEO, said he loved working with Vorwerk because she was “al-ways thoughtful, prepared and organized for any challenge.”

“We spent many hours together traveling in the Amazon of Bra-zil, including a snow-burst at al-

titude in Mato Grosso,” MacLen-nan said. “We trudged the snowy streets of Davos [Switzerland] at the World Economic Forum to-gether and trudged the streets of Washington, D.C., together.”

He added: “President Luis Guillermo Solís of Costa Rica greeted her as if she was a long-lost relative, and that’s why Akin Gump has done well to hire a very special person.”

Vorwerk recently made the move with the aim of marrying her passions, including an early dream of becoming an agricultur-al lawyer, when she joined leading Washington law firm Akin Gump.

As a senior policy adviser spe-cializing in trade and invest-ment and agriculture policy, Vorwerk said she is eager to tackle the challenge of merging public policy and the law while continuing her “personal mis-sion of advancing open markets and creating opportunities for investment so people can have better standards of living.”

She specifically looked at Akin as a chance to push ahead with more U.S. business investment in Cuba, where her knack for forging diverse relationships has come in handy.

Vorwerk not only spearheaded the U.S. Business Coalition for TPP, but she also heads up the U.S. Agriculture Coalition for Cuba, a group that has played a central role in moving Congress toward ending the embargo.

Paul Johnson, who works for Chicago Foods International and is a vice chairman of the Cuba co-

Planting the seedsGREG NASH

Devry Boughner Vorwerk, now a senior policy adviser at Akin Gump, credits a college course in agricultural policy for piquing her interest in trade.

“There was clearly excitement on the ground from the Cuban people embracing the United States. You’re in the moment realizing we’re in the middle of something very real. Change is inevitable.”Devry Boughner Vorwerk, Akin Gump senior policy adviser