Santiago Villa is a nonresident journalist fellow in the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub. Villa has fifteen years of professional experience in investigative journalism, technical and proposal writing, strategic communications, international development, and translations.

Villa worked as a journalist in China from 2014 to 2018, writing for several Latin American news outlets and as editor-in-chief of China Files, the first independent Spanish language news outlet focused on China. He received a Fund for Investigative Journalism grant in 2015 to report on China’s interoceanic canal project in Nicaragua. In 2013, he received the South African Taco Kuiper investigation grant to conduct research for a year in South Africa. Before 2013, Villa was a journalist in Colombia covering armed conflict, work for which he was awarded the Simon Bolívar National Journalism Prize.

Since 2018, Villa has lived in Colombia working as an investigative journalist and technical writer. He has written several pieces for the news outlet China Dialogue about Chinese companies in Colombia. He has also collaborated with the Global Investigative Journalism Network and was part of the organization’s team during the Global Investigative Journalism Conferences of 2019, 2021, and 2023.

He has worked as a proposal writer, and has also written monitoring, evaluation, and learning reports. Villa has also written concept notes for the Pan American Development Foundation, the International Organization for Migration, and Panagora Group. A native of Bogotá, Colombia, Villa is a dual US and Colombian citizen.