Vanessa Neumann

Vanessa Neumann (born 1972, Caracas) is a Venezuelan-American diplomat, business owner, author and political theorist. Neumann is the president and founder of Asymmetrica, a political risk research and strategic communications firm headquartered in New York City and Washington, D.C. Neumann served for four years on the OECD's Task Force on Countering Illicit Trade, and has been a consultant to UN Women on gender-based approaches to preventing and countering violent extremism. She is the author of the 2017 book Blood Profits: How American Consumers Unwittingly Fund Terrorists, as well as its 2018 Brazilian edition, Lucros de Sangue. During the 2019 Venezuelan presidential crisis, a plenary session of the Venezuelan National Assembly approved her appointment as ambassador for the acting President Juan Guaidó. She was appointed Ambassador and Chief of Mission for Venezuela to the Court of St. James's in the United Kingdom. The administration of Nicolás Maduro does not recognize Guaido's diplomats. In 2020, Neumann was a central figure in the historic (London) High Court decision that "unequivocally" recognized the legitimacy of the presidency of Juan Guaidó over that of Nicolás Maduro. The ruling against Maduro and in favor of Guaidó was upheld by the UK Supreme Court on 20 December 2021. Early life Vanessa Antonia Neumann was born in Caracas, Venezuela to Michal (the Czech version of what would be Miguel in Spanish, Michael in English, or Mikhail in Russian) Neumann (1947-1992) and Antonia Donnelly (1947-2015). Miguel Neumann was the son of entrepreneurs Hans and Milada Neumann, Jews who emigrated from Czechoslovakia to Venezuela in 1949. Antonia Donnelly de Neumann was an American of Irish and Italian descent. Neumann's grandfather, Hans Neumann, co-founded Corimon (Corporación Industrial Montana), which had its IPO on the New York Stock Exchange on March 23, 1993, and Fundación Neumann, a philanthropic foundation with the twin missions of cultural education and poverty alleviation programs. They also established the Instituto de Diseño Neumann, and were co-founders of the and the Instituto de Estudios Superiores de Administración (IESA), which, under the guidance of Harvard Business School professor Michael Porter, taught American business administration. For a quarter century, Hans Neumann was also the major shareholder of the Mustique Company, which owns the island of Mustique.