Ricardo Zúniga is the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary and Special Envoy for the Northern Triangle in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, he previously served as a Senior Diplomatic Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center Latin America Program, Director of the International Student Management Office at the National Defense University in Washington, DC, and as U.S. Consul General in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
Mr. Zúniga was a Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council from 2012 to 2015. He worked overseas in Mexico, Portugal, Cuba, and Spain. Domestically, Mr. Zúniga served in the State Department’s Office of Cuban Affairs, the U.S. Mission to the Organization of American States, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, and as the Desk Officer for Uganda and Tanzania.
He was born in Tegucigalpa, Honduras and has a B.A. in Foreign Affairs and Latin American Studies from the University of Virginia.