Mr. José R. Cárdenas is a Principal with the Cormac Group.  He has thirty years of experience in the Washington political process and inter-American relations.  He has served in senior positions in the U.S. Department of State, the National Security Council, and the U.S. Agency for International Development, where he served as Acting Assistant Administrator for Latin America and the Caribbean and oversaw nearly $1 billion in U.S. development assistance to the region.  He has served as a Senior Advisor to the Secretary General of the Organization of American States and as a Senior Professional Staff Member of U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

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In addition to testifying before both the Senate Foreign Relations and the House Foreign Affairs Committees, he has written and spoken and been interviewed widely on hemispheric issues.

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José is an advisor to the Foundation for Human Rights in Cuba and a member of the Research Council of the Center for a Free Cuba. Additionally, he is a Course Coordinator at the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Service Institute, and has been a participant in the State Department’s overseas Speakers Program.