As director of communications for USIP, Gonzalo Gallegos brings a breadth of international management and foreign policy experience developing communications solutions for challenges confronting the United States. Leading the public affairs and communication office, his team advances understanding of USIP’s goal of a world without violent conflict while identifying and engaging stakeholders, networks, and coalitions supporting that narrative.

Gallegos comes to USIP after almost three-decades as a foreign service officer, most recently serving as the senior advisor for Western Hemisphere Affairs for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations at the last three United Nations General Assemblies. He held positions as the deputy assistant secretary for public diplomacy in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs; as the chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in San Jose, Costa Rica; as the director of the Office of Central American Affairs; as the director of the Foreign Policy Advisor and State-Defense Exchange Programs Office in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs; and as the director of Caribbean Affairs.

He was seconded to the Organization of American States as the secretary for the Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism and served as the counselor for public affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan; the director of the State Department’s Office of Press Relations; as spokesman and public affairs adviser for the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs; and as the public affairs officer at the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, Cuba, and at the U.S. Embassy in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. He was also assigned to the State Department’s Bureau of European Affairs, and to postings in Nicaragua, Colombia, and Costa Rica.

Gallegos has a dual B.S. in political science and journalism and mass communications from Kansas State University and a master’s in national security strategy from the National War College.