Estuardo V.
Rodríguez, Jr.

Estuardo Rodríguez is a principal and co-founder at Raben focused on Government Affairs and Strategic Communications. A lawyer by training, he specializes in direct lobbying in the financial services and telecommunications sectors, advising leading companies across the industries. Having cultivated a powerful network of media relationships, Estuardo is also Raben’s counsel on Strategic Communications.

Estuardo’s commitment to outreach in the Hispanic community has been constant throughout his diverse political career. Through his work at the DNC, he built a cross-platform, Spanish-language media network that was leveraged to support presidential campaigns. He was an attorney at the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development under Secretaries Henry Cisneros and Andrew Cuomo. He worked on behalf of the U.S. Department of State as an independent political analyst in Latin America and Europe through three presidential election cycles.

Estuardo draws on this expertise, along with a reputation as a tough and charismatic professional, to advise Fortune 100 clients on their engagement with Congress, the White House, the civil rights community, and policymakers, identifying partnership opportunities and ways to mutually support innovative policies and programs for the industry, while at the same time providing low-income and diverse communities with high impact affordable products and services.

Among his corporate clients at Raben, Estuardo advises Charter Communications, Sony Music Group, T-Mobile, Warner Bros. Discovery, Verizon, and nonprofit organizations such as the Hispanic Heritage Foundation. Estuardo has also increasingly grown the firm’s service around asset management and impact investing, working with the Ford Foundation’s division of Mission Investments and forming a coalition of stakeholder firms to propose greater protections for Main Street investors in closed-end funds.

Fluent in Spanish, Estuardo has been featured as a political analyst and commentator on MSNBC, CNN, CNN en Español, Hill TV, NTN 24, Univisión, and Telemundo. Estuardo also employs his influence and leadership on several nonprofit and industry boards. He currently serves as the president and CEO of the Friends of the American Latino Museum, a campaign to create a Smithsonian National Museum of the American Latino on our National Mall. Through his leadership, the campaign finally secured congressional approval in December 2020 to build the long-overdue museum, which will house 500 years of American Latino history. The campaign now shifts to ensure that the best location on our National Mall is secured.

A co-founder of the Hispanic Lobbyists Association, Estuardo is also an advisory board member of Support Latino Biz and the American Latino Veterans Association.

Born and raised in Washington, D.C., Estuardo has always been drawn to the District’s unique position at the nexus of national and international politics. He considers himself fortunate to have established and led a space where he can successfully advocate for political and community actors advancing key policy priorities that lift communities of color through wealth creation and equitable opportunity.