Dr. Lily Lopez-McGee has dedicated nearly two decades of her career to capacity building, diversity, equity, and inclusion within international education and exchange and U.S. national security and foreign policy. Dr. Lopez-McGee served as the inaugural Executive Director for Diversity Abroad, the leading membership association providing resources at the intersection of DEIB and global education, prior to rejoining the Howard University Diplomatic Fellowships team. She also previously served as the director of the nationally recognized Pickering Graduate Fellowship Program where she managed a vital pipeline of diverse, talented U.S. diplomats. She also empowers and educates future leaders as an adjunct professor at American University’s International Teaching and Education Master’s Program.

Prior to her work at Howard University, Dr. Lopez-McGee served as manager at Diversity Abroad where she managed the Diversity Abroad Network, a professional network of institutions of higher education, and oversaw the development of the Global Equity and Inclusion (GEI) Guidelines, the first assessment tool developed to evaluate diversity and inclusion efforts in study abroad offices at U.S. institutions. Dr. Lopez-McGee also previously worked at UNCF Special Programs Corporation where she worked with minority-serving institutions on capacity-building efforts related to campus internationalization and grant management.

Dr. Lopez-McGee is a scholar, researcher, and speaker on the intersection of diversity, equity, and inclusion, international education and exchange, and careers in international affairs. Dr. Lopez-McGee has published in industry and academic journals including Frontiers: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Study Abroad, Global Impact Exchange, and the IIE Networker. She also serves as a Co-Chair of the Global Access Pipeline and has helped coordinate the Conference on Diversity in International Affairs sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations.

She is a graduate of the University of Washington, where she earned her bachelor’s in International Relations and master’s in Public Administration. She completed her doctoral work at George Mason University where she studied students’ perceived self-efficacy gains from study abroad. She is deeply committed to equalizing access to education and increasing opportunities for young people to gain international credentials. Dr. Lopez-McGee is based in Washington, D.C.