Jennifer Diaz

Jennifer Diaz is a Board Certified International Attorney, professor and professional speaker, considered an expert in international law by the Florida Bar. She is results oriented and regularly assists clients with issues relating to the import and export of merchandise to and from the United States and expediting supply chains with robust pre-compliance programs.

Ms. Diaz is an expert in working with the many Federal agencies that regulate trade, including the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB).

Michael Solomatin

Michael Solomatin is an Attorney at Diaz Trade Law and an active member of the Florida, District of Columbia, and New Jersey bars. Michael has extensive experience with import and export procedures from having managed compliance programs for large-scale telecommunication, energy and technology American multinational corporations as a Global Trade Compliance Account Lead.

Ryan Reed

Ryan Reed is an attorney at Diaz Trade Law and an active member of the D.C. Bar. Ryan has experience designing compliance plans and vetting commercial clients for forced labor and export control risk in cross-border transactions.

David Craven

David Craven has been an active practitioner in Customs and International Trade Law since his admission to the Bar in 1985.  Mr. Craven has represented clients in broad range of trade and customs matters from companies on 6 continents.  These companies range from sole proprietorships to large multi-national entities.

Augusto Perera

Augusto Perera, ESQ. is an Of Counsel attorney with Diaz Trade Law and an active member of the Florida Bar. He is admitted to practice before the United States District Court Southern District of Florida and the Court of Appeals for Federal Circuit.

Mr. Perera Attended Shepard Broad College of Law and received his Juris Doctor degree in 2014. Dedicated exclusively to intellectual property matters, specializing in trademark, copyright, licensing, and Internet Law, with a focus on new business development. His practice includes counseling clients regarding copyright protection and litigation, domain name disputes and protection, domestic and international trademark protection, practice before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board, and litigation work in federal and state courts

Rick D. Quinn Esq

Rick D. Quinn Esq. is an Of Counsel attorney with Diaz Trade Law and an active member of the California Bar. He is admitted to practice before the United States District Court, Central District of California. Mr. Quinn attended Loyola Law School of Los Angeles and received his Juris Doctor degree in 2005. His practice focuses primarily on U.S. Food & Drug Administration matters, including all premarket qualification requirements, post-market compliance matters, and import-related enforcement actions for start-ups, small-to-medium size privately held firms, and public companies. Mr. Quinn provides agreement drafting and review for regulated businesses, insurance coverage analysis, M&A transaction-related regulatory due diligence, litigation-related expert services regarding FDA compliance matters. Having worked with firms in more than 100 countries, his clients include manufacturers, distributors, and retailers in the food and beverage, medical device, cosmetics, dietary supplements, and drug companies.

Dana Watts

Dana Watts practiced law in multiple prominent Washington, D.C. firms for many years before coming to Diaz Trade Law. She focuses her practice on all aspects of customs law, including forced labor-related detentions, customs valuation, tariff classification, Section 301 and Section 232 tariffs, country of origin and marking determinations, and free trade agreements. She regularly files protests, prior disclosures, ruling requests, and responses to Requests for Information (CF-28s) and detention notices with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). She helps companies of all sizes draft customs compliance materials, perform merger and acquisition-related due diligence, and search for customs-related savings opportunities. She has experience litigating both customs cases at the U.S. Court of International Trade, as well as False Claims Act cases involving customs issues in federal courts. Dana has been a licensed U.S. Customs Broker for over twelve years. In addition to experience in customs law, she also has experience in sanctions, export controls, national security reviews before the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS), international trade-related due diligence, international trade arbitration, antidumping and countervailing duty investigations, and Section 337 litigation.

Michele Gaus Ehning

Michele Gaus Ehning began her career at Riggle and Craven, a boutique Chicago law firm specializing in customs and international trade law. She continued her focus on the business side at Komatsu America for the next 15 years providing oversight for customs and international trade
matters at Komatsu’s headquarters and manufacturing plants throughout the U.S. and Canada. She assisted with tariff classification of Komatsu’s imported goods and wrote petitions to the U.S. Customs Service successfully challenging its tariff classification decisions of Komatsu’s imported goods, saving the company thousands of dollars.

Michele received her Juris Doctorate from the University of Illinois Chicago Law School ( formerly the John Marshall Law School). She lives in the suburbs of Chicago with her husband and two children.

Todd Owen

Todd C. Owen is the former Executive Assistant Commissioner, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), Office of Field Operations (OFO).  As the senior executive for the Office of Field Operations for over 5 years, Mr. Owen was responsible for all operations at the 328 ports of entry in the United States, as well as overseas operations in 32 countries.  At these ports of entry, the OFO mission was directed toward counter terrorism, narcotics interdiction, facilitating lawful trade and travel, trade enforcement to include agricultural protections, and admissibility determinations of arriving and departing border crossers.  Mr. Owen oversaw an annual budget of $6.5 billion, and a workforce of 31,250 employees, of which 25,550 were sworn law enforcement officers, making OFO the largest law enforcement agency in the country.  He retired from federal service in August 2020, with over 30 years of dedicated service in CBP and U.S. Customs.

Carlos Ortiz

Mr. Ortiz is a veteran FDA professional with over 20 years of Agency experience and also a veteran of the US Air Force and Army. While in FDA, he served as Regional Activities Manager of the FDA’s Division of Import Operations for approximately ten years. In that role, he was responsible for reporting on the FDA’s import operations program and provided import guidance to the regulated industry, other stakeholders, and the field investigators in the Southeast Imports Division.

Kelli Thompson

Called to lead the nations through international development & empowerment, Ms. Kelli Thompson has dedicated her life to providing international trade advisory, training, and customs compliance consulting to countries around the world.  Kelli has traveled to many countries including Zambia, Guatemala, Kenya, Lesotho providing technical assistance to developing countries and leading textile verification teams on behalf of the United States government.

Don Woods

Don has worked in the express delivery, freight forwarding, and logistics industries for 34 years in both imports and exports.  He retired from UPS after 34 years of service as the VP, Customs & Trade Compliance for the Customs Brokerage business unit.   During his career at UPS, Don held various positions from operations to systems support and actively participated in and held key leadership roles in multiple industry associations; namely, the National Customs Brokers & Forwarders Association of America, Inc. (NCBFAA), the International Compliance Professional Association (ICPA), the American Association of Exporters and Importers (AAEI), the Trade Support Network (TSN), and the Express Association of America (EAA).

Ariana Malpica

Ariana received a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from University of Carabobo in Venezuela. She speaks both Spanish and English fluently. She has worked in the customer service and business administration fields since 2012. Ariana has a terrific capability to work under pressure, has an excellent ability to work with numbers, and has a good eye for detail; all qualities she has developed thanks to her math college degree.  Her knowledge and first-hand experience in customer service industry assist with her capability to understand our client’s needs and provide the required support to our attorneys.

Alexandra Okubo-Damas

Alexandra joins us from Miami Dade College where she held the position of Director of Administration at the West Campus. Alexandra shared a long history at Miami Dade College, which began in 2004. She brings over 16 years of professional experience in strategic planning, project management and evaluation, event planning, cost analysis and budget management. She is an accomplished and result driven business and organizational leader with a proven track-record of managing successful operations and identifying and developing profitable opportunities. Mrs. Okubo-Damas has excelled as a Team builder with a willingness to take calculated risks to achieve organizational objectives, while ensuring the collaborative relationships are leveraged to drive success.

Alexandra received a bachelor’s degree from Florida International University (Bachelor of Science in Exercise and Sport Sciences) and MBA from St. Thomas University.

Ina Melceras

Ina Melceras received both her Bachelors’ Degree and Paralegal Certificate from Florida International University.  Ms. Melceras career in the legal field began in 1979.  She became a Certified Paralegal in May 1990.

Upon joining Diaz Trade Law in January 2016, Ms. Melceras assisted the firm in dealing with the many Federal agencies that regulate trade.  She has experience working on U. S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Detention and Seizure cases, Foreign Trade Zone 281 applications with CBP and Port Miami, Federal Maritime Commission (FMC) Ocean Transportation Intermediary (OTI) and Non-Vessel Operating Common Carrier (NVOCC) applications, and U. S. Department of Commerce’s Scope Rulings.

Laura Charles

Laura received her master’s in management from INCAE Business School, the leading business school in Latin America, and during COVID she worked on and received her master’s degree in marketing from ADEN Business School. Laura has a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from the University of Colorado.

She has experience in office administration having worked in a multinational corporation. She is very organized and is able to successfully manage busy schedules. Laura is bilingual and speaks both English and Spanish and has exceptional interpersonal skills.
Laura resides in Miami, Florida, with her four children and husband. She loves to travel, meet new people, and learn about different cultures.