Newsroom Archive

Alejandra Castillo

National Deputy Director
Minority Business Development Agency

Ms. Alejandra Castillo has recently been appointed to serve as National Deputy Director of the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA). In this role, Ms. Castillo will serve as the principal advisor to the MBDA National Director and will assist in managing the day-to-day activities of the Agency. Prior to her appointment with MBDA, Ms. Castillo served as Special Advisor to the Under Secretary for the U.S. Department of Commerce's International Trade Administration (ITA) where she was responsible for business outreach and development of policy initiatives geared at trade promotion and enforcement of U.S. trade laws. Ms. Castillo's experience will also be valuable to MBDA as she will play an integral role in developing and implementing MBDA's Global Export Initiative for the minority business community as part of President Obama's National Export Initiative.

A practicing attorney for several years, Ms. Castillo has worked in the private, government and non-profit sector. Prior to joining the Obama Administration, Ms. Castillo served as the Interim Executive Director of the Hispanic National Bar Association headquartered in Washington D.C. During her tenure at HNBA, she was instrumental in working with the White House as well as non-profit organization, such as the Latinos for a Fair Judiciary, in support of the nomination and confirmation process to the Supreme Court of Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Ms. Castillo served in the Clinton Administration as a Senior Policy Analyst to the Deputy Director at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). In her position, Ms. Castillo was responsible for developing and analyzing White House initiatives on drug control policies in areas of drug trafficking interdiction, anti money laundering, as well as drug prevention and treatment programs. Before joining the White House, Ms. Castillo served as key staff for the Democratic National Committee Chairman, Don Fowler, and then joined the Clinton Gore Re-election campaign as Deputy Director for Special Projects.

A native of New York, Ms. Castillo holds a Bachelor Degree of Arts from the State University of New York at Stony Brook in economics and political science. Ms. Castillo holds a Master's degree in Public Policy from the Lyndon Baines Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin and has a Juris Doctorate degree from American University (AU)-Washington College of Law.

Ms. Castillo is active in a number of civic and professional organizations, including: The Hispanic National Bar Association, and the Hispanic Bar Association of DC, the American Bar Association, and serves a Board Member of the Dominican American Society of Queens, NY among others. She has worked on several presidential campaigns since 1992. During the 2008 Presidential Campaign, Ms. Castillo served as a member of the DNC's Hispanic Leadership Council and the Obama Latin America Foreign Policy Group, as well as working as a Voter Protection Attorney in Broward County, FL.

Ms. Castillo is a native Spanish and English speaker, and is fluent in Portuguese. She has appeared as a commentator or guest on Univision, Telemundo, HITN and CNN-Spanish, as well as Spanish language radio programs.