Nelson Cunningham
Nelson W. Cunningham is managing partner and a co-founder of McLarty Associates, the international strategic advisory firm. Under Mr. Cunningham’s leadership as managing partner, McLarty Associates has developed into a firm with global reach and almost four-dozen employees and advisors, stationed in Washington and around the world.
Mr. Cunningham is responsible for guiding the firm’s service to clients and is a skilled strategist on national and international policy issues. He travels extensively on firm business, helping ensure that the firm brings to our clients the broadest range of regional expertise and transnational perspectives.Prior to co-founding McLarty Associates in 1998, Mr. Cunningham served in the White House as special advisor to President Clinton on Western Hemisphere affairs and as general counsel at the White House Office of Administration. He previously served as general counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee, under then-Chairman Joseph R. Biden, focusing on constitutional, judicial, and criminal justice matters. Before moving to Washington, Mr. Cunningham served as an assistant United States attorney in the Southern District of New York from 1988 until 1994, having been hired by Rudolph Giuliani.
Mr. Cunningham is active on foreign policy and political matters and frequently speaks to audiences in the United States and abroad. He was a member of the Obama-Biden Transition Team and an advisor during the campaign, and was a foreign policy and trade advisor to John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, as well as to other Democratic candidates. He is an active member of the boards of the Institute of the Americas, the Business Council for International Understanding, the American Security Project, and the U.S.-India Business Council, and is a member of the Yale President's Council on International Activities, the Department of State’s Advisory Committee on International Economic Policy, the Council of the Americas, and the Council on Foreign Relations. He also serves as chairman of NDN’s Latin America Policy Initiative. A lawyer by training, Mr. Cunningham is a member of the DC, New York, and Massachusetts bars.
Mr. Cunningham is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale College and Stanford Law School, where he served as an editor of the Stanford Law Review. He was raised in Latin America and has lived in seven different countries throughout the region. Mr. Cunningham speaks Spanish fluently and French passably.
