Diego Asencio, Executive Director of the US-Spain Council, is a consultant to Becker & Poliakoff, P.A., a law firm based in Florida. He is President of American Immigration Services, Inc. of Greenbelt Maryland, a firm that assists intending immigrants to apply for investor visas. He is also a member of the Board of Univertel, S.A. a company which will offer full communications service, voice, video and data to the Portuguese market and of Bukkehave, Inc. of Denmark, which provides automobiles to international NGOs and governments.

From 1991 to 1993 he served as Executive Director of the Florida International Affairs Commission. He was Chairman of the Commission for the Study of International Migration and cooperative Economic Development from 1987 to 1990. From 1986 to 1988 he was Executive Director of the Una Chapman Cox Foundation.

Diego Asencio served as Ambassador to Brazil from 1983 to 1986, when he retired from the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Career Minister. Prior to his nomination as Ambassador to Brazil, Diego Asencio was Assistant secretary of State for consular Affairs from 1980 to 1983 and Ambassador to Colombia from 1977 to 1980. His postings in the Foreign Service from 1957 have included Mexico, Panama, Portugal and Venezuela, with an earlier assignment to Brazil.

Diego Asencio was born in Nijar, Almeria, Spain on July 15, 1931, and was raised in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated from Georgetown University in 1952.

Ambassador Asencio is a member of the New York council on Foreign Relations, the American Foreign Service Association, the Council of the Americas, the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Washington Institute for Foreign Affairs.