About the professional.
Katherin Díaz Velilla is a Colombian corporate lawyer and international tax strategist with over 12 years of experience spanning the public and private sectors in Colombia and Latin America. She is the Co-Founding Partner of V&V Asociados, a boutique advisory firm based in Bogotá specializing in international tax structuring, regulatory strategy for the digital economy, and strategic tax defense. Katherin's career is defined by a unique combination of insider regulatory knowledge and private sector leadership. She served as an attorney at Colombia's Dirección de Impuestos y Aduanas Nacionales (DIAN) for eight years, where she specialized in international taxation, transfer pricing, and high-complexity tax matters for the energy and financial sectors. She subsequently served as an advisor to the Colombian Senate, the Ministry of Finance, and the Presidency of the Republic on fiscal and regulatory matters — directly participating in the drafting and analysis of national and international tax legislation. In the private sector, she served as Business Tax Manager at Ernst & Young (EY), leading tax consulting projects for companies in Oil & Gas, technology, and financial services before founding V&V Asociados. Her current practice focuses on four core areas: (1) international tax planning and corporate structuring for companies expanding within and beyond Colombia; (2) regulatory strategy for FinTech, crypto, AI, and digital economy businesses; (3) strategic tax defense and litigation before the DIAN, the Consejo de Estado, and the International Chamber of Commerce; and (4) public-private advisory and regulatory impact analysis. Katherin is a columnist at International Tax Notes — the world's leading international tax publication — and at Ámbito Jurídico (Legis), Colombia's primary legal reference. She is the founder of Visión Expandida, V&V Asociados' editorial platform on international taxation and digital regulation, and of Altea Academy, an executive education initiative focused on high-level decision-making in tax and regulatory matters. She is a doctoral candidate in Law at the Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), holds a Master's degree in International Tax Law from the Universidad de La Rioja (Spain), and holds an Executive Certificate in Economic Leadership for Mining from the University of British Columbia (Canada). Additional certifications include OECD Transfer Pricing, UN-FLACSO, University of Michigan, and Leiden University programs. Katherin is a member of the Instituto Colombiano de Derecho Tributario (ICDT), the Tax Criminal Law Observatory at UBA, and Women in Mining Colombia. She is an angel investor in FinTech startups and an active speaker and conference presenter at national and international universities and industry events. She lectures at the Universidad del Rosario, Universidad Libre, Universidad de La Sabana, Universidad Santo Tomás, Universidad Sergio Arboleda, and UNIR (Spain), and has been a keynote speaker at the International Tax Congress of the Universidad de Chile.
