Welby Leaman

Welby Leaman

Senior Director for Global Government Affairs at Walmart, Socrates Program

Welby Leaman is Senior Director for Global Government Affairs at Walmart, where he is lead on the Americas from the company’s headquarters in Arkansas. Walmart de México y Centroamérica has over 230,000 employees and 3000 stores, covering every state in Mexico and all five Central American CAFTA countries, which gives it a constructive role in both the U.S.-Mexico relationship and Mexico’s socioeconomic development prospects. Previously, as Trade Counsel to the U.S. House Ways & Means Committee, Leaman managed passage of the U.S.-Colombia trade agreement, consultation with USTR on 14 chapters of TPP and TTIP, and ongoing congressional oversight of NAFTA. He served as Director for International Investment at the U.S. National Security Council and as Senior Advisor at the U.S. Treasury, where he was lead U.S. negotiator of the financial services chapter of the Peru and Colombia trade agreements, led the team that wrote the CFIUS regulations, and helped staff the NAFTA Financial Services Committee. He practiced law at Debevoise & Plimpton and WilmerHale and was placed for several years into the Peruvian government by the UN Development Program. Leaman chairs the board of the Nazareth Project, serves on advisory councils for the Mexico Institute at the Wilson Center, the Rosenthal Fellowship, Aspen Institute’s Socrates Program, and INCAE business school. He was a 2014 Eisenhower Fellow in Brazil and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He holds a B.S. from Messiah College and J.D. from Yale Law School.