Visitors to the headquarters of Vooice Assembly, on West Olympic Boulevard in Los Angeles, are often surprised by what they find: a calm, book-lined office, a whiteboard crowded with conference logistics, and a co-president who spends his other working hours investigating crimes. We sat down with Dr. Abraham Camargo, co-president of Vooice Assembly LLC, in that very office to ask the questions our readers send us most often.

Let's start simply. Who are you, and how did all this begin?

(laughs) Straight to the hard questions, I see. My name is Abraham Camargo. I'm a Mexican-born American citizen, and I hold a PhD in environmental sciences from the University of California, Los Angeles, UCLA for those who like acronyms. I'm also a senior detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. My line of work is the kind where we are not very public, (laughs) but we do keep an eye on the public. So yes, a scientist, a cop, and a debate organizer walk into an office. That's my résumé.

How does a working detective find time to build an organization like this?

It is very adventurous, I'll give you that. But I'm not doing it alone. Vooice Assembly is a partnership with my colleague and co-president, Mr. Coleman. We founded it around 2011, and back then nobody would have called it impactful. It was a society at UCLA, a bunch of students, nine to twelve of us, arguing, writing poetry, and researching poetry, believe it or not. It was a practical, in-person group, so it was never really online.

"We started with nine to twelve people and a lot of opinions. We still have the opinions."

Things got serious in 2017, when Coleman told me he wanted this to be the most intellectual debate platform in the world. I think we've made real progress. We're still working on it, because that kind of goal is never really finished.

How did you connect with the European Debate Society, and how did the MOU come about?

Great question, and honestly one of my favorite stories. In 2019 I attended a conference in the Netherlands organized by the European Debate Society, on climate change and the greenhouse effect. As an environmental scientist, how could I not go? There I met the Society's team, who were collaborating at the time with the French Debating Association. The FDA is a very prestigious organization, but its work was mostly national and bound to France. The European Debate Society was the first to have an affiliation with them.

We got on well, so we proposed something ambitious: one debating platform that brings the best universities of the United States together under the umbrella of the European Debate Society, alongside nations from across the world. That conversation grew into a Memorandum of Understanding, which we have signed. In practice, the Society operates, supervises, and administers the structure of the model, and it makes the final decision on applications.

What exactly is the European Voice Assembly, and who is behind its academic side?

Let me explain what a model is, because this matters. A model is the infrastructure under which a specific motive or domain is worked on. The European Voice Assembly, EVA, is our flagship, our premium model, and it runs on the Aurelian Oratory Protocol, the AOP. Our academic side is a panel of five to seven senior Harvard-affiliated faculty members, together with colleagues who work under the supervision of the debate leadership there. I'll be honest, I'm not going to recite names for you in a public article. These are senior academics with full schedules, lectureships, and universities of their own, and they have not asked to be put on a poster. Their names are shared on request and with their consent.

What does the panel do? Applications arrive in batches while the window is open. Every two weeks we send the completed applications to two places: our own evaluation office and the Harvard-affiliated panel. They send back their recommendations, including the candidates they endorse for fully or partially funded places. Our evaluation team reviews those, cross-checks everything, and after deep collaboration between both teams, the list is finalized and goes forward for the European Debate Society's final decision.

EVA is not our only model. The American Art Council brings people together nationally to present their art and creations. The Global Leadership and Diplomacy Forum is, for now, based in the Netherlands, run through our franchise there. And the Global Innovation and Tech Assembly is our newest, started just last year. EVA itself started in 2019, and we have held seven conferences so far, some national and three international: the Global Debate Championships in Los Angeles, in Istanbul, and in the Netherlands. We are now working on our fourth international edition.

People ask all the time: can you show your affiliations with the Harvard union and the French Debating Association?

Yes, we have them, and I want to be diplomatic and very clear about this. We have a signed MOU with the European Debate Society. We have endorsements from the Harvard-affiliated team, and we enjoy the support of our partners. These are real documents, and they exist.

What we don't do right now is post them online. That's a deliberate choice. We're at an early stage, and frankly there are people who would love to see us stumble. Collaboration documents, partner correspondence, and signatures are exactly the things that get copied, edited, forged, and passed around. Our partners also have their own rules: major universities and institutions generally control the use of their names, seals, and logos very tightly, and our agreements carry confidentiality terms. So the documents are kept confidential by agreement.

And since people always ask which laws are involved, let me be precise, because I'm a scientist and I like my facts exact. No law forbids us from publishing them, and I would never claim the Constitution does. That would be a bit dramatic, even for me. (laughs) What the law does do is protect our right to keep confidential business information confidential. Federal and California trade-secret law, the Defend Trade Secrets Act and the California Uniform Trade Secrets Act, protect confidential commercial information as long as the owner takes reasonable steps to keep it secret, and not posting it on the open internet is one of those steps. Our MOU and partner agreements are, of course, enforceable contracts with their own confidentiality terms. The Lanham Act, the federal trademark law, is why nobody, including us, plasters a partner's name or logo anywhere without permission. And privacy laws such as FERPA and the California Consumer Privacy Act are the reason applicant and student information stays protected.

So, to answer your question directly: if a court, a regulator, or a party's legal counsel formally asks for these documents, they will be provided, to the legal teams and the courts, under proper confidentiality terms. What we won't do is hand them to anyone who messages us on social media. We're happy to be open, just not careless.

Why is the team so low-profile online? Isn't that unusual?

Let me give you a Hollywood example. Think of any movie you love. It is the work of a huge team, hundreds of people. But what do you see? The finished product. Have you ever seen a director walk into his own film to announce, "Hello, I'm the director, and here is the rest of the crew"? Of course not. The names appear in the credits at the end, and let's be honest, after the climax everyone is already walking out of the cinema. Nobody stays to read the producer's name. They came to enjoy the movie.

It's the same for us. Our product is the people, the delegates who come to our conferences, debate, and win. The team behind them is large, accomplished, and busy, and prestigious institutions protect their privacy and reputation for good reason. The law gives them that right, and we respect it. Ask our past delegates. They'll tell you what they saw.

Can you show pictures and delegates from past events in the Netherlands, France, and Los Angeles?

Our past gallery was on our website before the Istanbul edition. If you applied for Istanbul, you may well remember it, because many applicants looked at it first. The thing is, every event has its own model website, so we publish the most recent gallery and retire the older one. We don't like piling things up. We're also in the middle of preparing our fourth international conference, so we're still building and establishing ourselves.

Why doesn't the official EVA Instagram page show earlier debates?

(laughs) Because we're old school! We are, frankly, old enough that Instagram wasn't part of our world. The only platform we really knew was LinkedIn, and we posted there regularly. Then we realized that young people live on Instagram, so we moved. We closed the earlier LinkedIn page so we can focus on one platform at a time. Everyone should evolve toward something better. That's not a bad thing.

Where can people find transparent information about the organization?

The About section on our website is the best place. You'll find what we do, our working model, and how we operate. We're not people who play around. We're a very focused team working very deeply and bringing something different.

Where can people physically meet you or the team?

(laughs) If you want to meet me or Mr. Coleman, come to Los Angeles. Our headquarters is at West Olympic Boulevard, Suite 200, Los Angeles, CA 90064, and anyone who wants a discussion is welcome to visit in person. Our legal office is in Wilmington. If you're in the Netherlands, you can visit us there too. We also have a new office in the UAE for our Middle East section, and we have a presence in France and Australia. The addresses are on our website.

What are you doing at the moment?

At this moment I serve with the LAPD, and I'm also working as a visiting lecturer at Harvard. Busy? Yes. Boring? Never.

Several delegates who applied for the Istanbul edition did not attend. What happened?

I'll answer without naming anyone, out of respect for them. We had four important delegates from Japan, France, Nigeria, and the United States who weren't able to attend, and the reasons were varied. One delegate had to withdraw because of the Tokyo University entrance exam, which is among the toughest in Japan, and she sent us a thoughtful, detailed apology. We lost funded money on that, (laughs) because once funding arrives, we book things immediately for the final list: the room, the travel, everything. When someone doesn't come, it creates real problems for us, but we're open about it. Another delegate, sponsored by a French partner, told us he felt he wasn't prepared. One delegate didn't receive a visa. For the fourth, I would have to check my logs, so I won't guess.

Finally, how can people reach you or the president directly?

Easy. Email the office. The address is in the Contact Us section of our website, and your message lands directly in my mailbox. Either I will reply or Coleman will.