Latin America Leadership Program

Michael Shifter is the former president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a major political forum on Western Hemisphere issues based in Washington, DC. Shifter held senior positions in the Dialogue for nearly three decades, including a dozen, until April 2022, as president. He currently serves as a senior member of the organization.

Shifter regularly writes and comments on US-Latin American relations and hemispheric issues. His articles have been published widely, including in The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, Financial Times, Current History, Americas Quarterly, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Journal of Democracy, Politico, and Harvard International Review , as well as in leading newspapers and magazines in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. He is frequently interviewed by American, Latin American, European and Chinese media, and frequently appears on CNN and BBC. Shifter has lectured on a variety of topics related to the Americas at leading global affairs centers and universities in the United States, Latin America, and Europe and has testified many times before the United States Congress on American policy toward Latin America and Caribbean.Before joining the Dialogue, Shifter directed the National Endowment for Democracy's Latin America and Caribbean program and, before that, the Ford Foundation's governance and human rights program in the Andean region and the Southern Cone, where He was based first in Lima, Peru and then in Santiago, Chile. In the 80s he was representative in Brazil before the Inter-American Foundation and also worked in the Latin American Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Since 1993, Shifter has been an adjunct professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, where he teaches Latin American politics. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Latin American Studies Association and is a contributing editor to Current History. He is currently a member of the board of directors of InSight Crime and serves on the Advisory Committee of Human Rights Watch/Americas Division. He previously served on the board of directors of the Washington Office on Latin America and the Social Sciences Foundation of the Graduate School of International Relations at the University of Denver.

Shifter graduated Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude from Oberlin College and has a master's degree in sociology from Harvard University, where he taught Latin American politics and development for four years. He has received decorations from the governments of Colombia, Spain and Peru.