Mark Lopes is the deputy assistant administrator for the Bureau for Latin America and Caribbean. He was formerly the senior foreign policy advisor/staff director for the chairman of the International Development and Foreign Assistance subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Prior to that he served on detail to the House Appropriations, State, Foreign Operations subcommittee where he was responsible for all Title II programs including the Export-Import Bank, Overseas Private Investment Corporation, U.S. Trade and Development Agency, over $1 billion in global democracy and governance programs, as well as supporting appropriations issues related to foreign assistance reform, the Millennium Challenge Corporation and Latin America.

He entered government as a Presidential Management Fellow and has consulted overseas with UNICEF, the Inter-American Development Bank and the Harvard Law School, and completed short assignments in U.S. embassies around the world. He has also worked with the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance as the field officer on the Disaster Assistance Response Team in West Darfur, Sudan. Lopes was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Paraguay. He is a term member of the Council on Foreign Relations and holds a B.M. from Berklee College of Music, and a M.P.P. from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Areas of expertise:

• Latin America and the Caribbean