Louis E. Sola

Louis Ernest Sola (born January 8, 1968) is a Commissioner of the Federal Maritime Commission. Sola currently works under Chairman Michael A. Khouri and alongside Commissioners Daniel B. Maffei and Rebecca F. Dye.

On November 15, 2018, Sola was nominated to the Federal Maritime Commission by President Donald Trump and was confirmed by the United States Senate on January 2, 2019. He was sworn into office on January 23, 2019 during the government shutdown for a 5-year term expiring June 30, 2023.

Sola previously served on the Florida Board of Pilots Commissioners and chaired the probable cause panel for maritime incidents.

Early life and education
Louis E. Sola was born in Chicago, IL on January 8, 1968, and grew up in Goodland, Indiana and the Panama Canal Zone. He received an A.A. in History from Parkland College in 1989; a B.S. in Management from the Nova Southeastern University in 1996; and a M.S. in International Finance from the University of Illinois in 1998. He is a two-time graduate (in Spanish and German) of the Defense Language Institute, Foreign Language Center, located at the Presidio of Monterey, CA.

Military career
Sola served as a Strategic Debriefer for the United States Army Intelligence and Security Command in Munich, Germany after the fall of the Berlin Wall by strategically debriefing refugees from Eastern Europe. Subsequently, he served in Counterintelligence and Counter Narcotics missions in Panama with the United States Southern Command, commanded by future Drug Czar General Barry McCaffrey, during the War on Drugs and the fall of Pablo Escobar. Sola earned the US Army Parachutist Badge (Airborne) and was awarded the Humanitarian Service Medal for his efforts during the 1994 Cuban rafter crisis. His accounts of the resilience of the Cuban people where latter recounted in the Financial Times.

Politics
Sola previously ran for the United States House of Representatives seat for Florida's 24th congressional district as a Republican political candidate against Democratic Representative Frederica Wilson. Both candidates were removed from the ballot which was cited as a factor that led to the 2018 U.S. Florida Senate election recount. Sola has publicly stated he will not run for Florida’s 26th congressional district in 2020.