erik brand

External Affairs + Stakeholder Relations Lead

Erik’s two decades of professional experience spans international business, strategic communications, public affairs, and civil society.

At DevryBV, his role is to cultivate relationships with key stakeholders, bring new clients to the firm, and engage with executives to ensure that our work exceeds their high expectations.

Before joining the firm, he was the founding director of the Corporate Program at the Inter-American Dialogue in Washington, DC, a nonprofit organization working alongside 18 former heads of state that consistently ranked in the top 2 percent of U.S. think tanks during his tenure. His work engaged hundreds of the world’s best-known and most innovative companies in the organization’s mission, including Amgen, Apple, BMW, Citigroup, Fitch, Merck, Mitsubishi, Roche, and Walmart, to name several.

Erik was also the publisher of the highly regarded Latin America Advisor, a daily publication that he and his team grew into a respected brand reaching international business leaders, government officials, and scholars. In addition to corporations, the publication’s subscribers included the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, U.S. Departments of Defense, Energy, and State, government agencies of Canada, Denmark, Japan, Korea, Singapore, and the libraries at Baylor, Berkeley, Dartmouth, Duke, Harvard, Notre Dame and Villanova, among other universities.

Earlier in his career, Erik worked in New York City with the International Advisory Group, a boutique strategic communications and public affairs consulting firm, where he helped serve clients including AT&T, Gartner, IBM, Xerox, Columbia University, the Markle Foundation, the Lasker Foundation and other clients.

He has been twice appointed to the Governor of the State of Minnesota’s Trade Policy Advisory Council. He also served as an officer and member of several nonprofit boards of directors at both the local (Lakeville Area Arts Center) and international levels (Partners of the Americas).

Born and raised in a farming community in rural Minnesota, Erik holds a B.A. degree with summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors from Wheaton College in Massachusetts. He has completed courses toward master’s degrees at the University of Maryland in international management and the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey School of Public Affairs.

A lifelong learner, Erik is currently working to complete courses toward a professional certification in Ecological Restoration at the University of Minnesota, with a focus on native prairies and pollinator habitats. Erik and his family maintain a prairie restoration on their property outside the Twin Cities, where he’s often on the lookout for Bombus affinis, the highly endangered rusty patched bumble bee.