Melissa Martinez has joined the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Department of Public Policy as this year’s U.S. State Department Diplomat in Residence.
Diplomats in Residence are a select group of career state department foreign service officers and specialists on assignment throughout the U.S. to provide guidance and advice on careers, internships and fellowships to students and professionals in the communities they serve.
Martinez is a media and communications professional with 13 years of international and domestic experience in the U.S. diplomatic service. She most recently worked as deputy press attaché at the U.S. Embassy Mexico City, one of the largest U.S. diplomatic missions in the world.
Prior to that, Martinez served as the director of the Media Hub of the Americas for Latin American and Caribbean media based in South Florida. She fostered new partnerships with the academic community, civil society, and private sector in Miami and throughout the Americas to advance policy outreach for senior U.S. officials.
Her previous foreign service assignments included press attaché at the U.S. Embassy San Jose; policy officer for Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America with the Bureau of International Information Programs in Washington D.C.; consular officer at the U.S. Embassy Mexico City; and deputy public affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy Montevideo.
In 2002, Melissa received a master's degree from Columbia University's School of International Public Affairs, where she was a Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Graduate Fellow and National Security Exchange Program International Graduate Fellow. She earned B.A. from New Mexico State University in 1999. Born and raised in New Mexico, Melissa is fluent in Spanish and has studied Portuguese and Italian.
