William Perry

William Perry is the principal at William Perry & Associates, a Washington-based firm providing consulting services to governments and the private sector throughout the Western Hemisphere. He is also a Director of the Americas Liberty Forum and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). In the past, Mr. Perry has served as the chief staff person for Latin America on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Director of Latin American Affairs at the National Security Council and was in charge of hemispheric issues for the Bush-Quayle campaigns of 1988 and 1992. He discharged similar responsibilities during the 2000 campaign effort of George W. Bush. From 2002 to 2005, Mr. Perry served as Senior Advisor to the Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Mr. Perry has traveled extensively throughout Latin America, covering most to the important electoral contests there since the early 1980s. He is the author of numerous book-length works, studies, reports and articles. Moreover, his opinions are widely cited by print and electronic media in Europe and Latin America, as well as the United States, and he has been called upon to provide testimony before the US Congress on many occasions.

Mr. Perry received a B.A. in History and Political Science (Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Vermont, going on to earn his M.A. in International Relations and Latin American Affairs at the University of Pennsylvania. Subsequently, he taught and/or conducted research at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, the School of Advanced International Studies at the Johns Hopkins University, the Stanford Research Institute and the Political Science and International Relations Department at the University of Brasilia. Immediately before entering government service, Mr. Perry was Director of the Latin American Program at CSIS from 1981-1985. He is a fluent speaker of both Spanish and Portuguese.