CaribWorldNews, WASHINGTON, D.C., Tues. Dec. 1, 2009: One by one, President Barack Obama is slowly but surely putting his Caribbean ambassadors in place.
On Monday, he added yet another to the growing list, this time his pick to the Dominican Republic.
Raul H. Yzaguirre, Sr., a Presidential Professor of Practice and Executive Director of the Center for Community Development and Civil Rights at Arizona State University in Phoenix, Arizona, was named as the President`s choice to the Spanish-Caribbean nation.
His appointment comes on the heels of the appointment of Beatrice Wilkinson Welters, a top fundraiser to team Obama, to Trinidad and Tobago. But Yzaguirre is far from one of the President`s top fundraisers during his recent campaign.
In fact, according to recent campaign finance records, Yzaguirre donated $1,500 to then Senator Hillary Clinton, not Obama in 2008.
But there is no denying Yzaguirre`s experience in Hispanic issues and education. From 1974 to 2005 Yzaguirre served as President and CEO of the National Council of La Raza Prior to that, he served as Vice President at the Center for Community Change in Washington D.C. From 1969 to 1973, he founded two sister management consulting organizations: Interstate Research Associates and InterAmerica Research Associates.
Yzaguirre also served as a senior program analyst in the U.S. Office for Economic Opportunity and as a special advisor to the Director of OEO, Sargent Shriver, from 1966 to 1969.
He has also been appointed to the President`s Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics and monitored several presidential elections in Latin America as a board member of the National Democratic Institute.
Yzaguirre also served in the U.S. Air Force Medical Corps for four years. He has a B.S. from George Washington University, was an Institute of Politics Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and studied at La Universidad de Las Americas in Puebla, Mexico.
He now faces confirmation by the Senate, like Wilkinson Welters. If confirmed, Yzaguirre and Wilkinson Welters will bring to four, the number of U.S. ambassadors so far handpicked to serve in the Caribbean by the President.
Ambassadors Nicole Avant and Vinai Thummalapally have already taken up their posts in the Bahamas and Belize, respectively.
