Kupferschmidt named executive director of Rockefeller Center

The David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies has announced that David Kupferschmidt is the center’s new executive director. Kupferschmidt brings to Harvard extensive experience in Latin America for nearly a decade, including work as a consultant for international organizations, NGOs, governments, and the private sector.

Kupferschmidt has worked throughout Latin America in public and private sector capacities, as well as with the nongovernmental organization (NGO) sector. He has served as an international expert for the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights in Guatemala, and has had consultancies with Global Justice, a human rights organization in Brazil, as well as with CARE, the United States Agency for International Development, and the Organization of American States. His private sector work has included analyzing information technology markets in Peru and Ecuador for a Silicon Valley research company, and managing an advocacy campaign for a U.S. telecommunications company in Bolivia.

Most recently, David Kupferschmidt served as an Evaluator for the European Initiative for Democracy and Human Rights of the European Commission, a project implemented by ARS Progetti, Rome. His work involved evaluating proposals by NGOs in the former Soviet Union for projects promoting democratization and human rights.

While an undergraduate government concentrator at Dartmouth College, he spent a semester abroad in Puebla, Mexico. He has a master of arts in law and diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, where he wrote a thesis on “Democratization in Argentina,” following a summer seminar on the politics and economics of the Southern Cone at the University of Belgrano in Buenos Aires. He holds a J.D. from the Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. During his law school training, he was awarded a Foreign Language and Areas Studies (FLAS) scholarship for the study of Brazilian Portuguese.

David Kupferschmidt assumed his new role as the executive director of the Rockefeller Center on May 3.