Luigi R. Einaudi is a retired U.S. diplomat and educator. In 2000, Ambassador Einaudi was elected Assistant Secretary General of the Organization of American States, and served also as Acting Secretary General in 2004-2005. At the OAS, Einaudi supported both the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights and the Inter-American Defense Board, and brokered negotiations to reduce border problems in Central America and to increase democratic space in Haiti, including the introduction of Haiti’s first personal identity card.

Einaudi’s 23-year State Department career culminated as the U.S. Special Envoy in the peace talks that led to the comprehensive settlement in 1998 by Ecuador and Peru of their centuries-old territorial conflict. Einaudi served twice (1974-1977 and 1993-1997) on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and was Director of Policy Planning for Inter-American Affairs (1977-1989) and Ambassador to the OAS (1989-1993). While at the State Department, he helped articulate policy and conducted consultations with most Western European nations, NATO and Japan as well as with Brazil, Latin America and the Caribbean.

Ambassador Einaudi has received awards from Presidents Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Secretaries of State Kissinger and Albright, and the Departments of State and Defense. The Presidents of Ecuador, Italy and Peru and the King of Spain have also decorated Einaudi for his achievements.
Luigi R. Einaudi was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1936, earned an A.B. from Harvard (1957), was drafted into the United Sates Army (1957-1959), then returned to Harvard, earning his Ph.D. in 1967. From 1963 to 1974, Einaudi was at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica, California, where he led RAND’s social science research on Latin America. From 1998 to 2000, he worked on multilateral affairs at the Inter-American Dialogue. Ambassador Einaudi has taught Government at Harvard, Wesleyan, UCLA and Georgetown Universities and has lectured widely in the United States and abroad.

Since 2007 Ambassador Einaudi has been a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the American Academy of Diplomacy. A former fellow (1980-81) at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, he is now on the board of its Brazil Institute.

He and his wife, Carol P. Einaudi, Esq., divide their time between homes in Washington, D.C. and Italy, where Ambassador Einaudi is on the board of the Fondazione Luigi Einaudi in Turin.