International Affairs ‘84
Brewster Waddell is the CEO of Participation Designs, a high-end lighting design company based in Frisco, Texas. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, he spent over twenty years’ establishing profitable business channels for U.S. financial service and technology companies throughout Latin America and was well-networked at the C+ levels within many of the top tiered banks and financial institutions in Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Puerto Rico. Prior to his career in international sales, Brewster served as International Trade Director and Director of Mexico for the Texas Department of Commerce under then-Governor George Bush, where he was responsible for overseeing all international trade activities for the State of Texas. Before accepting this post, he was a marketing consultant for over ten years, developing international trade programs and strategies; creating joint ventures with foreign companies; establishing international sales and distribution networks and providing companies with short/long term market planning and consumer product development. Among his clients were Lone Star Airlines, Central and Southwest Utilities, and The Dallas Chamber of Commerce.
Brewster is also a passionate philanthropist and is serving as:
- Advisory Director for the North Texas Food Bank (https://ntfb.org/advisory-council/);
- Vice-Chair of the Advisory Board for the School for International Affairs at the University of Colorado;
- Advisory Council board member for the University of Texas Dallas’ Center for Global Business (UTD Naveen Jindal School of Business)
- Founder of a non-profit in Santiago, Chile (Fundación Alianza por Control de Enfermedades Crónicas no Transmisibles),
- President of the Stone D’Arcy Waddell Memorial Fund, which was established in the name of his son, Stone, who passed shortly after birth.
Previously, Brewster served as Trustee and two-term President of the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation trustee (www.cehughesfoundation.org); Fundraising Chairman for Chiapas International, (a Dallas-based non-profit charged with raising over $3 million for the Grameen Foundation's "Last Mile Initiative”, a key rural agricultural sustainability and micro-finance project in Colombia). Former Advisory Director on the Latin America Committee for the Grameen Foundation
Brewster previously lived in Italy for fifteen years and speaks Spanish, Italian, French and Portuguese. He has a BA in International Affairs from the University of Colorado and has earned certificates from UTD’s Naveen Jindal School of Management in Non-Profit Corporate Governance and Southern Methodist University in International Marketing