Alberto Fernandez
Alberto M. Fernandez is Vice President of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a position he also held from 2015 to 2017. He previously served as President of Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), a US-funded Arabic-language news organization, from 2017 to 2020.
Prior to joining MEMRI, Ambassador Fernandez was a Foreign Service Officer from 1983 to 2015 and served as the State Department’s Coordinator for the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications from 2012 to 2015. He also served as U.S. Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea and U.S. Charge d’Affaires to Sudan. He held senior public diplomacy positions at the U.S. embassies in Afghanistan, Jordan, Syria, Guatemala, Kuwait, and in the Department’s Near East Affairs (NEA) Bureau. He also served as a U.S. diplomat in the United Arab Emirates, Dominican Republic and Nicaragua.
Fernandez was a career member of the U.S. Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor; he was a recipient of a 2008 Presidential Meritorious Service Award, the 2006 Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy, a 2003 Superior Honor Award for his work in Afghanistan, 1996 Linguist of the Year, among many other awards.
Ambassador Fernandez is a Non-Resident Fellow in Middle East Media and Politics, TRENDS Research and Advisory, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. A graduate of the University of Arizona (B.A. and M.A.) and the Defense Language Institute, he served in the U.S. Army and came to the United States as a refugee from Cuba in 1959 growing up in Miami, Florida. He is fluent in Spanish and Arabic.
He has published in Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal, the SAGE Handbook of Propaganda, AFPC World Almanac of Islamism, Defense Dossier, Journal of International Security Affairs, Providence, WINEP Policy Brief, Foreign Service Journal, Cipher Brief, MEMRI, University Bookman, The European Conservative, The Lamp, The American Mind, IM-1776, Washington Post, Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, Algemeiner, The American Conservative, Washington Examiner, Al-Majalla, Brookings Institution, Gatestone Institute, Georgetown Cornerstone, ReVista: the Harvard Review of Latin America, Middle East Quarterly, and the Journal of the Assyrian Academic Society (JAAS).