Hi, my name is Oscar A. Lopez III

Currently I serve as the UNA-USA Youth Observer to the United Nations where I represent American youth on the International Stage. I also serve on the Advisory Board for Lady Gaga’s Born This Way Foundation where I am working to break the stigma around mental health in Latinx communities, and on the Laredo Food Policy Council where I helped pass a plan to alleviate food deserts through the Laredo City Council. I am also on the Board of Directors for the Webb County Heritage Foundation where I’m focused on ensuring that the stories of border heroes are represented in the Smithsonian Institution’s upcoming National Museum of the American Latino.

In the summer of 2021 I worked as a Summer Analyst at Goldman Sachs where I worked to expand access to venture capital funding to women and minority-founded companies for the firm’s $1 Billion Launch With GS initiative, and in the spring of 2022 I advanced the Biden administration’s federal climate policy as a White House intern with the White House Council on Environmental Quality.

For the past three years, I’ve worked to close the digital divide in the United States. In 2019, I was selected as the youngest-ever Google Public Policy Fellow. Through my position, I worked with Public Knowledge and the National Hispanic Media Coalition on issues concerning broadband access, data privacy, and the future of artificial intelligence. My work led up to me authoring a filing, submitted to the Federal Communications Commission, detailing the need to improve nationwide broadband data collection. In early 2020, I was a Public Policy Fellow at Next Century Cities where I led research on the economic and public health benefits of expanding broadband access during the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the 2020-2021 school year, I work as a Product Management Analyst at Irys where I helped design, build, and launch products that give community members the ability to suggest city projects to their local government.

As a Business Honors and Government Student at the University of Texas at Austin, I served as the first Central American Speaker of the Student Government Assembly where I focused on advocating for increased access to mental health resources for students. From May 2019 to May 2020 and May 2021 to May 2022, I held a seat on the Student Services Budget Committee where I worked with my peers to allocate the committee’s $41 million toward initiatives that would increase mental health resources for students and increase diversity on campus.

In 2019, I was made a Rotary Paul Harris Fellow by the Laredo Daybreak Rotary Club, and in 2020 I received the Texas Exes President’s Leadership Award.

My writings have appeared in the Laredo Morning Times, PublicKnowledge.com, NextCenturyCities.com, and more.

Picture by Matt Wright-Steel