PERSON: Cecilia Muñoz

New America

Senior Advisor

Cecilia Muñoz (born July 27, 1962) is an American public policy expert who served as Director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President Obama, a position she held for five years. Prior to that, she served as the White House Director of Intergovernmental Affairs for three years.

Before working for the White House, she was Senior Vice President for the Office of Research, Advocacy and Legislation at the National Council of La Raza (NCLR), the largest Latino advocacy organization in the United States. At NCLR, she supervised all legislative and advocacy activities conducted by NCLR policy staff. She was also the Chair of the Board of the Center for Community Change and served on the U.S. Programs Board of the Open Society Institute and on the boards of directors of the Atlantic Philanthropies and the National Immigration Forum. In 2000, she was named a MacArthur Fellow for her work on civil rights and immigration.

Since leaving government service, she has served at New America, a Washington-D.C. based think tank. She also co-founded and co-chairs several small non-profits including Welcome.US, Frontline Justice, Bedrock and More Perfect.

She was featured in several episodes of the documentary series How Democracy Works Now: 11 Stories, and she contributed a chapter to West Wingers: Stories from the Dream Chasers, Change Makers, and Hope Creators Inside the Obama White House discussing her experiences in the Obama White House. In 2020 she published More Than Ready: Be Strong and Be You... and Other Lessons for Women of Color on the Rise’’ with Seal Press.

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