Lee Schlenker is a research associate with the Global South program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Schlenker previously served as the policy director at an advocacy organization working to improve U.S.-Cuba relations, a journalist and producer with an award-winning independent media outlet, and Cuba program co-director and Northeast regional director at an international peace organization. 

Schlenker’s work has been published and/or cited in The Guardian, Responsible Statecraft, Jacobin, Newsweek, ESPN, NPR, The Nation, The Hill, Miami New Times, USA Today, La Jornada, Boston Review and The American Prospect, among others, and he has conducted research on Latin American political and economic issues at Boston University, Brandeis University, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, Columbia University, and Corporación Escenarios. 

Schlenker is a MA candidate in Latin American Studies at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service. He graduated summa cum laude from Middlebury College as an Independent Scholar in Latin American Urban Studies and is fluent in Spanish and conversant in Portuguese.