Maria Echaveste Headshot
Report a problem with this profile
[email protected]

Maria Echaveste  

President & CEO of the Opportunity Institute, Former U.S. Presidential Advisor to Bill Clinton, Co-Founder of Nueva Vista Group

Maria Echaveste is the President and CEO of the Opportunity Institute, where she oversees executive and administrative duties, including day- to-day activities, development, and budgets, and directs programmatic work. She has built a distinguished career working as a consultant, lecturer, senior White House official, long-time community leader, and corporate attorney.

Echaveste has been affiliated with UC Berkeley in various capacities since 2004 including: lecturing at the School of Law and in the undergraduate division on immigration and education; serving as program and policy director of the Law School’s Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy from 2008 to 2012; as a Senior Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Center for Latin American Studies since 2008; and with the Berkeley Food Institute, focused on transforming our nation’s food system.

Prior to co-founding the D.C.-based strategic and policy consulting group NVG, LLC, in 2002, Echaveste served as Assistant to the President and Deputy White House Chief of Staff for President Clinton from 1998 to 2001. In that position, in addition to general White House management, she focused on several policy and political issues, including immigration, civil rights, education, finance, Mexico, and Latin America. She also served as Administrator of the Wage and Hour Division at the U.S. Department of Labor from 1993 to 1997.

In 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton appointed her as a special representative to Bolivia. Echaveste later served on the board of the U.S.-Mexico Foundation, where she initially focused on the foundation’s Mexican-American Leadership Initiative launched in 2010. 2010. In 2013, President Obama nominated her to be ambassador to Mexico; she withdrew eight months later having been denied a confirmation hearing.

Currently, Echaveste serves on the board of directors of UCSF-Benioff Oakland Children’s Hospital, Mi Familia Vota, and Level Playing Field Institute.

Echaveste received a B.A. in anthropology from Stanford University in 1976, and a J.D. from U.C. Berkeley in 1980.

Speech Topics


The Intersection Among Politics, Policy & Communications

The Border: Are We Ready For It to Disappear?

Globalization: Can Consumers Make a Difference?

The Growing Political, Social & Economic Influence of Hispanic Americans: Myth or Reality?

News


Campus law school’s Maria Echaveste withdraws name from ambassador nomination
Maria Echaveste, a program director at the UC Berkeley School of Law, withdrew her nomination to serve as the U.S. ambassador to Mexico earlier this week, according to a White House official.
Berkeley’s Maria Echaveste nominated to become ambassador to Mexico
BERKELEY — Maria Echaveste, the policy and program development director at the Chief Justice Earl Warren Institute on Law and Social Policy at UC Berkeley’s School of Law, has been nominated by President Obama to become the United States’ next ambassador to Mexico.

Related Speakers View all


More like Maria