Robert Chiappetta is currently Manager of Government Affairs at Toyota Motor North America, Inc.  He is responsible for enhancing the company’s reputation and advancing its legislative and regulatory agenda with Members of Congress and the Administration.  His primary focus is on labor, international trade, and privacy issues.  In addition, he serves as the company’s liaison to a number of political organizations, trade associations, and congressional caucuses.  He joined Toyota in 1998.

Robert is a member of the Public Affairs Steering Committee of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM).  He was nominated to the American Council for Young Political Leaders (ACYPL) and served as a delegate to Russia in June 2008.  He now serves on ACYPL’s Board of Trustees, where he is a member of the executive committee and co-chairs the Alumni Council.  Robert also serves on the Board of Directors of the Hispanic Lobbyist Association (HLA), the Corporate Advisory Board of the Congressional Hispanic Leadership Institute (CHLI) and the Board of Directors of the Carlos Rosario Educational Foundation, a fundraising arm of the Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School in Washington, DC.

Robert has volunteered on various political campaigns at the national and local levels.  He was elected as a delegate for Sen. Barack Obama at the 2008 Virginia Democratic Party Convention.

Robert received a B.A. in International Relations and East Asian Studies from the State University of New York, College at New Paltz and a M.A. in Commercial Diplomacy from the Monterey Institute of International Studies.  As an undergraduate, Robert was awarded a Monbusho Scholarship from the Japanese Ministry of Education to study at Kanazawa University, in Kanazawa, Japan.  During his post-graduate studies, he spent a year studying at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies, in Yokohama, Japan.