Dr. Rebecca Bill Chavez is president and CEO of the Inter-American Dialogue. She has over 30 years of experience in academia, policymaking, and government service.
Dr. Chavez served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs from 2013 until 2016, for which she was awarded the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service. Her areas of focus included expanding defense institution-building programs, shaping Defense Department contributions to President Obama’s Central America Strategy advancing U.S. security cooperation with Mexico and Colombia, and resetting defense relations with Argentina and Brazil.
Prior to joining the Obama-Biden administration, Dr. Chavez was a tenured professor of political science at the United States Naval Academy, where she served on the Admissions Board and the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate. Her research focused on democracy, the rule of law, and security, and she taught a wide variety of comparative politics and international relations courses.
Dr. Chavez is the author of The Rule of Law in Nascent Democracies (Stanford University Press). Her work has appeared in edited volumes and scholarly journals, including The Oxford Handbook of Law and Politics, Courts in Latin America (Cambridge University Press), Comparative Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, and The Journal of Latin American Studies. Her opinion pieces have been published in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and Defense One.
Raised in Austin, Texas, Dr. Chavez received her MA and PhD in political science from Stanford University and her BA in public and international affairs from Princeton University. She is a member of the Leadership Council for Women in National Security (LCWINS) Steering Committee, the Princeton University Institute for Regional and International Studies Advisory Board, the Center for Media Integrity in the Americas Board, the Foreign Policy for America Advisory Board, and the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the recipient of multiple academic grants, including a Fulbright Scholarship.
