Lauri J. Fitz-Pegado, Chair, is a Partner at The Livingston Group LLC (TLG), which provides public affairs, government relations, and strategic communications counsel to governments, corporations, educational institutions, and nonprofit organizations.

 She contributes to the development of new business strategies, proposals, and presentations for TLG and is the Director of the International Relations/ Business Development Practice Group.

Fitz-Pegado served as Assistant Secretary and Director General of the U.S. and Foreign Commercial Service at the Department of Commerce, promoting U.S. exports, and assisting U.S. companies expand their market share and compete for contracts around the world, and managed 130 export promotion offices overseas and 90 in the United States.  She also directed Commerce’s Africa Task Force leading the reorganization of commercial offices in Africa, the U.S.-South Africa Business Council and numerous trade missions to Africa and other big emerging markets throughout the world.  Appointed by President Clinton and confirmed by the Senate in 1994, she served under the late Secretary Ronald H. Brown, and Secretaries Mickey Kantor and William Daley.

She was Director for Public Liaison of the first Clinton-Gore Inaugural and advisor on international issues to Democratic Committee Chairman Ronald H. Brown.  She served on the Obama for President campaign’s foreign policy team for Latin American and the Caribbean and Africa.

In 1997, she joined Iridium LLC, the world’s first global satellite and paging company, where she was Vice President for Global Gateway Management and Vice President for Corporate Affairs and Communications. A former Foreign Service Officer who served in the Dominican Republic and Mexico,  Fitz-Pegado also provided domestic and international clients strategic communications counsel, public and government relations services for over eleven years at Gray and Company and Hill and Knowlton.  

Fitz-Pegado serves on the board of the Constituency for Africa.  She is a senior advisor and mentor to professionals in the University of Denver’s International Career Advancement Program (ICAP) and the Ron Brown Scholars program.  She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Washington Government Relations Group.  Fitz-Pegado is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Vassar College and has a Master of Arts degree from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Economics and Latin American Studies.  She speaks Spanish and Portuguese.