On May 6, 2022, President Joe Biden announced his intention to nominate Hugo F. Rodriguez, Jr. as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Nicaragua. On May 9, 2022, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee received the nomination.
Hugo F. Rodriguez, Jr., a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, currently serves as a Senior Advisor in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. He was previously Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and, in 2021, assumed the role of Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the bureau. Before that, Rodriguez served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Asunción, Paraguay, and as the Embassy’s Charge d’ Affaires a.i. from 2017 to 2018. Earlier, Rodriguez served as Consul General at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City and as the Mission’s Acting Minister Counselor for Consular Affairs. He previously served as Deputy Director of the Office of Mexican Affairs, as Division Chief for the Western Hemisphere in the Bureau of Consular Affairs’ Overseas Citizen Services office, and as a Watch Officer and Senior Watch Officer in the Executive Secretariat’s Operations Center. Other overseas assignments include U.S. Embassies in Lima, Peru, and Rome, Italy.
A native of Pennsylvania, Rodriguez holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from Hampden-Sydney College. Rodriguez speaks Italian and Spanish, the recipient of numerous State Department performance awards.
