President Biden Announces Key Nominees

WASHINGTON – Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate the following individuals to serve as key leaders in his administration:

• Jay Shambaugh, Nominee for Under Secretary for International Affairs, Department of the Treasury
• William Duncan, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of El Salvador
• Lesslie Viguerie, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Kyrgyz Republic
• Denis Udall, Nominee for Trustee of the Morris K. Udall Scholarship and Excellence in National Environmental Policy Foundation
• Tess Udall, Nominee for Trustee of the Morris K. Udall Scholarship and Excellence in National Environmental Policy Foundation

Jay Shambaugh, Nominee for Under Secretary for International Affairs, Department of the Treasury

Jay Shambaugh is a Professor of Economics and International Affairs at the George Washington University. His area of research is macroeconomics and international economics. His work includes analysis of the interaction of exchange rate regimes with monetary policy, capital flows, and trade flows as well as studies of international reserves holdings, country balance sheet exchange rate exposure, the cross-country impact of fiscal policy, the crisis in the euro area, and regional growth disparities.

Shambaugh served as a Member of the White House Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) from 2015-2017. Earlier, he served on the staff of the CEA as a Senior Economist for International Economics and then as the Chief Economist. He also spent three years as the Director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. He is a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research and Non-Resident Senior Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. Prior to joining the faculty at George Washington, Shambaugh taught at Georgetown and Dartmouth and was a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund. He has published a book on exchange rate regimes, edited a number of policy related books, and published in many leading economics journals. Shambaugh received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, an M.A. from the Fletcher School at Tufts, and a B.A. from Yale University.

William Duncan, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of El Salvador

William H. Duncan, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, currently serves as a Senior Inspector in the Office of the Inspector General, U.S. Department of State. Previously, he served as Consul General in Monterrey, Mexico. Prior to that, he served as Deputy Chief of Mission at U.S. Embassy Mexico City, Mexico. A Foreign Service officer since 1992, he has also served at U.S. Diplomatic Missions in Asunción, Madrid, Baghdad, Mexico City, Bogotá, San Salvador, and Matamoros. His domestic assignments include the Offices of Andean Affairs, Mexican Affairs, East African Affairs, and Central American Affairs, as well as the State Department Operations Center. Duncan has received numerous performance awards, including a Presidential Meritorious Service award and four Senior Foreign Service Performance awards.

A native of Louisiana, Duncan has a Bachelor’s Degree and a Juris Doctor from the University of Arkansas. He speaks Spanish.

Lesslie Viguerie, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Kyrgyz Republic

Lesslie Viguerie, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, currently serves as the U.S. Department of State’s Deputy Assistant Secretary for Central Asian and Pakistan Affairs within the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. Previously, he was Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India. In Washington, DC, he was Director for Europe and Asia in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, and Director for Central Asia in the Bureau of South and Central Asia Affairs. Previous overseas assignments include Deputy Political Counselor for the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, Senior Director of the Interagency Rule of Law Section for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, and External Political Relations Chief for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow.

A native of Virginia, Viguerie is the recipient of numerous State Department performance awards, including a Senior Foreign Service Performance award. Viguerie is a graduate of The George Washington University (B.A.) and Catholic University of America (J.D.) and is a member of the District of Columbia Bar Association. He speaks Russian, Hindi, and Portuguese. 

Denis Udall, Nominee for Trustee of the Morris K. Udall Scholarship and Excellence in National Environmental Policy Foundation

Denis Udall is the Director of Strategic Partnerships with the George Lucas Education Foundation where he manages the strategic direction of the Foundation’s priorities related to project based-learning. Previously, Udall was a program officer at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation for eight years where he managed strategy and grantmaking related to a wide range of areas, including improving the quality of curriculum and instructional materials, California education policy, and classroom and school-level formative assessment. During his tenure at the Walter S. John Foundation, Udall focused on vulnerable, disconnected youth. Udall has also had a 10-year history with Outward Bound including helping to found Expeditionary Learning (now EL Education), a national school improvement network, and the New York City Outward Bound Center, Outward Bound’s first urban center. Udall is the founder of the North Oakland Community Charter School. He received an Ed.M. from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Tess Udall, Nominee for Trustee of the Morris K. Udall Scholarship and Excellence in National Environmental Policy Foundation

Tess Udall is a sixth generation Coloradan, born and raised in the foothills of Boulder. Udall is currently a law student at the University of Colorado, where she is specializing in environmental law with an emphasis on native communities and civil rights. While at Colorado Law, she has interned with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, served as a student clerk for Chief Justice Brian Boatright of the Colorado Supreme Court, and is currently a student attorney in the Getches-Green Natural Resources and Environmental Law Clinic.

Udall previously served as Chief of Staff to the COO of the Retail and Rental Division at Vail Resorts. Udall also worked on strategic partnerships and client relations at Guild Education, a Denver education startup redefining the future of work. Earlier in her career, Udall served in the Obama-Biden White House in various roles in the Chief of Staff’s Office, on the Scheduling and Advance team, and for First Lady Michelle Obama. Udall graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Foreign Affairs and Sociology.