What You Get
We translate geopolitical complexity into action
Private sector diplomacy
Private Sector Diplomacy & Market Entry
Markets open through governments before they open through customers.
Who this is for Companies entering or expanding in the Americas; investors and family enterprises with hemispheric exposure.
RPK practices commercial diplomacy: the disciplined application of diplomatic method, institutional knowledge, and senior relationships to private commercial objectives. We help companies enter, expand, and defend positions in markets where the state acts as gatekeeper, partner, or competitor. Our principals have negotiated for a sovereign with the United States, the European Union, and China. That experience now serves clients who need the door opened correctly the first time.
Market prioritization and entry strategy
We help clients decide where to compete before deciding how. Drawing on ground-level knowledge of the region’s political economies, we assess markets by regulatory reality, political durability, and the client’s actual leverage, then sequence entry so that early moves build position instead of exposure.
Political due diligence
Before a client commits, we examine what the documents cannot show: the political standing of counterparties, the durability of concessions and permits, the informal networks around a sector, and the pressures a change of government would bring. Our assessments draw on relationships across the hemisphere’s governments and business communities built over two decades.
Stakeholder mapping and engagement design
Every market has a map of who decides, who influences, and who blocks. We build that map for the client’s specific objective, then design the order and manner in which each actor is approached, because in dealings with governments, sequence is strategy.
Alignment with U.S. and host-government priorities
The strongest commercial position in the hemisphere today is alignment with both Washington and the host capital at once. We position clients inside that convergence: nearshoring incentives, security cooperation, infrastructure priorities, and the policies that now reward transparent, aligned partners.
Nearshoring strategy
For companies moving production closer to the U.S. market, we advise on site selection, incentives, free zones, and regulatory roadmaps across the United States and Latin America, and on the political durability of each jurisdiction’s offer, which matters more than its headline.
Introductions with protocol and purpose
When we open a door, the client walks in prepared. Introductions are made at the right level, in the right order, with the groundwork laid, because a meeting secured badly is worse than no meeting at all.
Standing counsel
Geopolitical Risk Retainers
Continuous coverage for leadership teams that cannot afford surprise.
Who this is for Companies operating across the Americas; governments managing U.S. and EU relationships; investors with hemispheric exposure.
A retainer with RPK is standing access to senior judgment. Clients receive ongoing geopolitical coverage of the markets and policy arenas that determine their outcomes, delivered at the cadence of decision, written for boards, and calibrated to each client’s actual exposure.
Weekly intelligence briefs
Senior-authored analysis of U.S., Latin American, and European developments, filtered for the client’s exposure. This is not a news digest; it is an assessment of what matters, why it matters to this client, and what to do about it.
Monthly executive consultations
Standing sessions between the client’s leadership and RPK principals directly, where the month’s developments are translated into decisions. The principal who writes the analysis is the one in the room.
Scenario planning
Elections, regulatory turns, and policy shifts are mapped before they arrive. We build the scenarios, assign the signposts, and prepare the responses, so the first day of a crisis is not spent deciding what to think.
Board and committee briefings
Quarterly geopolitical briefings written and delivered for boards and executive committees: concise, decision-oriented, and calibrated to fiduciary responsibility rather than intellectual interest.
Priority crisis response
Retainer clients hold first claim on principal time when situations break, with rapid assessment and counsel in the opening hours, when positioning is decided.
Transaction execution
Transactional Support
Every cross-border transaction now carries a political dimension.
Who this is for Private equity and venture firms, multinationals, and infrastructure developers with deals exposed to sovereign or policy risk.
Deals that cross borders cross governments. RPK provides the political layer of transaction execution: diligence on sovereign and policy risk, regulatory mapping, and government-facing support from evaluation through close. We work alongside counsel and bankers, covering the dimension their mandates do not.
Political risk assessment for transactions
For acquisitions, infrastructure projects, and market entries, we assess the political layer of the deal: the durability of the regulatory framework, the exposure of the asset to sovereign action, and the alignment of the transaction with the direction of policy in Washington and the host capital alike.
Regulatory mapping
We chart who decides, in what order, under what pressures, and on what real timeline, across U.S., Latin American, and multilateral frameworks, so that counsel’s legal strategy runs on an accurate political map rather than an organizational chart.
Investment screening and national-security review context
For transactions that touch U.S. national-security review, including CFIUS, we provide the political and policy context around the process: how the deal will be read, which concerns will surface, and how structure, partners, and narrative can address them before they are raised.
Deal structuring for political reality
Ownership structure, partner selection, sequencing, and the manner of announcement each carry political consequences. We advise on all four, so the transaction is built to survive the environment it will enter.
Post-close positioning
The approval is the beginning, not the end. We help clients establish standing with regulators and host governments after close, so that the next request, the next permit, and the next dispute arrive on a foundation already laid.
Institutional standing
Government & Institutional Engagement
In Washington, interests without representation are represented by your competition.
Who this is for Companies, family enterprises, and sovereigns that need standing presence before Washington and the multilateral system.
RPK designs and executes engagement strategies toward the U.S. executive branch, Congress, and the multilateral system: the World Bank and IFC, the IDB, the DFC, and EXIM. We know these institutions from the inside, having represented a sovereign before them. Where registered advocacy is required, we direct it through established lobbying partners under a single strategy.
Washington engagement strategy
We design the client’s Washington presence from the ground up: which agencies hold the client’s files, which committees hold jurisdiction, which institutions shape the narrative around the client’s sector, and in what order each should be engaged. No file is opened cold.
Executive-branch navigation
Our principals have sat across from the Departments of State, Defense, Treasury, Commerce, and Homeland Security on behalf of a sovereign. We help clients engage departments and agencies with the preparation, protocol, and substance those buildings respect.
Trade, tariff, and sanctions navigation
We help clients understand and manage exposure to tariff actions, OFAC sanctions programs, and BIS export controls including the Entity List, providing the strategic and political layer alongside counsel wherever legal representation is required.
Congressional education
Members respond to constituencies. We build congressional engagement on district logic: the jobs, investment, and trade a client represents in the places members answer to, so the client’s story becomes one a member can carry as their own.
Multilateral finance positioning
The World Bank and IFC, the IDB, the DFC, and EXIM finance the hemisphere’s development. We position clients before these institutions, whose processes and politics our principals know from the sovereign side of the table.
Legislative strategy
Through registered advocacy partners operating under a single strategy, we support the advancement of measures that serve the client and the defeat of adverse ones before they harden into law. The second half of that sentence is the one that usually matters.
Coalition building
A client’s voice multiplies when chambers, associations, and policy institutions carry the same message. We identify the natural allies, build the coalition, and keep it disciplined.
Integrated counsel
The Advisory Buffer
The problem is rarely the advisors. It’s the lack of alignment between them and their client.
Who this is for Clients working with major law firms on cross-border matters; companies whose Washington, Brussels, and local advisors need a single strategy.
Sophisticated clients rarely lack advisors. They have counsel in three jurisdictions, a lobbyist in Washington, a consultant in Brussels, and communications support: each excellent, none aligned. RPK serves as the buffer and the integrator. We translate what lawyers need into what governments can actually deliver, supply the political context legal strategy is missing, and hold every advisor to one strategy.
Legal-political coordination
We translate what lawyers need into what governments can actually deliver, and what governments intend into what legal strategy must anticipate. The two languages are different; we are fluent in both.
Political context for law-firm matters
Arbitrations, disputes, and regulatory matters are decided in legal forums but shaped by political environments. We supply the client’s law firm with the context the case file is missing: the pressures on the counterparty, the disposition of the government, the timing that the docket cannot see.
Multi-advisor alignment
A Washington lobbyist, a Brussels consultant, local counsel in two capitals, and a communications firm will each do their job well and pull in five directions. We hold them to one strategy, one narrative, and one sequence.
Engagement design
Government engagement strategy the legal team can execute but cannot design: who to approach, in what order, with what framing, and through which channel, built by people who have received such approaches in office and know which ones work.
Prepared judgment
Training
Judgment can be trained. Pressure can be rehearsed.
Who this is for Corporate boards, executive teams, and government affairs departments preparing for high-stakes situations.
RPK designs and runs the exercises through which leadership teams learn to decide under geopolitical stress. Our simulations are modeled on events our principals managed in office, which gives them a realism that scenario literature cannot supply.
Board-level crisis simulations
Exercises modeled on situations our principals actually managed: bilateral pressure at canal scale, trade disruption, political transition. Leadership teams rehearse real decisions under conditions built from the real thing, which is what separates a simulation from a seminar.
Media preparation
Preparation for executives facing politically sensitive coverage, built on our principals’ record of more than fifty national and international media appearances on exactly such issues. We prepare clients for the interview they will actually get, not the one they hope for.
Diplomatic protocol and negotiation workshops
For teams engaging governments: how ministries actually work, how negotiating with a sovereign differs from negotiating with a company, and the protocol that opens rooms or quietly closes them.
Geopolitical onboarding
Structured programs that bring boards, C-suites, and investment committees to working fluency in the geopolitical forces shaping their decisions, so that the next crisis briefing lands on prepared ground.
Next-generation programs
For family enterprises preparing a generational transition, we build in the next generation the institutional relationships, knowledge, and judgment that today reside in a single principal, so that continuity depends on structure rather than memory.
Special situations
Crisis & Special Situations
When the call comes, the plan should already exist.
Who this is for Leadership teams facing political crisis, adverse regulatory action, or reputational exposure in sovereign contexts.
RPK provides rapid-response counsel and surge capacity for the moments that define reputations. We build the playbook before it is needed and run it beside the client when it is.
Crisis playbooks
Built in calm for use under fire: contact trees, decision rights, first-seventy-two-hour sequences, narrative frameworks, and the pre-established relationships that make speed possible when minutes matter.
Rapid-response counsel
When situations break, principals engage immediately: assessment of what has actually happened, the options that remain open, and the sequence that preserves them. The first days decide most crises; we are built for them.
Cross-team coordination under pressure
In crisis, legal counsel, communications, and government affairs each optimize for their own risk and pull the client in three directions. We hold the political strategy that aligns them, so the client speaks and acts as one.
Investigations preparedness
For congressional and regulatory inquiries, we prepare clients for the political dimension alongside counsel: hearing and testimony preparation, narrative discipline, and the management of exposure across committees and agencies that talk to each other more than they admit.
Our Intelligence
RPK Signals
Our written intelligence product: concise, senior-authored analysis tracking political inflection points, policy moves, and market-relevant shifts before they harden into consensus. Distributed to clients and qualified subscribers.
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How We Work
Senior judgment, held to clear disciplines
The four claims
- 01
Access
Standing relationships across Washington, the multilateral system, and Latin America’s governments, built by principals in office and maintained through senior affiliations at CSIS and the Inter-American Dialogue.
- 02
Judgment
Strategy built backward from the client’s objective, informed by how ministries, agencies, and boards actually decide.
- 03
Experience
Our principals have negotiated with the current U.S. administration at the highest level, represented a sovereign before the United Nations Security Council, and managed a bilateral crisis watched by the world.
- 04
Outcomes
We measure engagements by institutional behavior changed and commitments secured, and we stay in the room until the outcome is real.
The disciplines
- 01
Senior only
Every engagement is led and staffed by principals. No work is delegated to analysts the client will never meet.
- 02
Discretion as method
We do not announce clients, publicize engagements, or seek attention. Outcomes are the deliverable.
- 03
Fee discipline
Counsel, advocacy, and introductions are scoped separately and priced honestly, never blurred.
- 04
Conflicts checked first
We confirm independence before we accept a mandate.