Leopoldo Martínez Nucete

On August 10th, 2021, President Joe Biden nominated Martinez to be the director of the Inter-American Development Bank. Hearings were held before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on December 14, 2021. The committee deadlocked on the nomination in a party-line vote on March 29, 2022. The entire Senate would need to move to discharge it from the committee.

In 2018, Tom Pérez appointed him to the national leadership of the Democratic National Committee and he also served as Finance Chair of the DNC's Hispanic Caucus and one of the DNC National Finance Committee Deputy Chairs. Leopoldo Martínez also was a member of the Steering Committee and Central Committee of the Democratic Party of Virginia. Given his leadership roles with Latino Victory, Martinez Nucete has supervised or advised the work of such organization in the presidential campaigns of Hillary Clinton (2016) and Joe Biden (2020); and in more than 50 political campaigns of candidates for the United States Congress or Senate, as well as candidates for Governor or legislators in States such as Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, Florida, California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada or Arizona.

Martínez Nucete began his political career with the Democratic Action (Acción Democrática) party, which has an international affiliation with Socialist International. In the parliamentary elections of 2000, Leopoldo Martínez was elected as an independent Assembly member supported by an alliance between Enrique Mendoza with various electoral movements and the Primero Justicia party. His relation with Primero Justicia ended as a result of being called to occupy the position of Minister of Finance in the "de facto" government that was intended to be formed after the coup d'état of April 2002. However, Martínez never accepted that position. As a result of these events, Leopoldo Martínez sat in parliament as an Independent until 2005, resuming his ties to Acción Democrática.

Martínez Nucete graduated as a lawyer from the Andrés Bello Catholic University (UCAB) and received two LL.M. degrees from Harvard University (1989) and University of Miami (2008). In addition, he is a Mid-Career Fellow (MCF ‘96) in International Studies and Economic Policy from the School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He was also Professor of Law at the UCAB in Venezuela, and a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School in 1995. In 1996 he published his first book "Democracia Económica" (Princeton Academic Press, 1996) and lately 94 Paradoxes to Consider in the 21st. Century (Editorial Dahbar, 2019).

Leopoldo José Martínez Nucete (born October 16, 1964) is a Venezuelan-American lawyer, writer, and politician. He was previously a member of the Democratic National Committee and an opposition deputy in the National Assembly of Venezuela. Martinez is the current nominee to become the United States Executive Director of the Inter-American Development Bank.