Anya Landau French

Anya Landau French advises clients on access into the Cuban marketplace and U.S.-Cuba relations. She has made more than 40 trips to the island since 2000.Prior to joining Akin Gump, Anya served as international trade advisor to Chairman Max Baucus (D-MT) of the Senate Finance Committee.

There, she focused on trade and worker adjustment policy and U.S.-Cuba trade issues, and she helped draft and pass the 2006 SAFE Port Act.During her time in the Senate, Anya developed in-depth knowledge of Treasury Department sanctions enforcement and helped connect U.S. exporters directly to Cuban counterparts at the Ministries of Foreign Relations, Trade and Investment.

These included Alimport, the sole Cuban purchaser of authorized U.S. agricultural products.Anya also worked at the Center for Democracy in the Americas as a senior fellow and directed the Cuba program at the New America Foundation.

Her views on Cuba policy have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, ForeignPolicy.com, The Hill.com, CNN.comand U.S. News and World Report, among other publications. At the Center for International Policy, she worked closely with Wayne S. Smith, former Chief of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

She is also the sole author of Options for Engagement: A Resource Guide for Reforming U.S. Policy Toward Cuba, a report that she published with the Lexington Institute in early 2009, identifying more than 70 options for policy change that the U.S. President and Congress might realistically begin to explore.

Experience:

• Focuses on U.S.-Cuba relations.
• Served as international trade advisor to the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee.

Education:

• M.A., George Washington University, 2001
• B.A., Guilford College, 1995