Michael Shifter

Michael Shifter is President of the Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based policy forum on Western Hemisphere affairs. Shifter previously served as the organization’s vice president for policy and managed the Dialogue’s programs on the Andean region and democratic governance. Since 1993 he has been adjunct professor of Latin American politics at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. 

Before joining the Dialogue, Shifter directed the Latin American and Caribbean program at the National Endowment for Democracy and the Ford Foundation’s governance and human rights program in the Andean region and the Southern Cone, where he was based in Lima, Peru and then Santiago, Chile. Prior to that, he served as a representative at the Inter-American Foundation for the Brazil program.

Shifter writes and comments widely on US-Latin American relations and hemispheric affairs and has frequently testified before the US Congress. He is co-editor, along with Jorge Dominguez, of Constructing Democratic Governance in Latin America (Johns Hopkins University Press). He is contributing editor to Current History and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  Shifter graduated summa cum laude from Oberlin College and received a Masters degree in sociology from Harvard University.