Mamet, a former U.S. ambassador to Argentine, earned a B.A. in political science at UCLA and is a long-term entrepreneur and business consultant.
UCLA International Institute, July 18, 2023 — Noah Mamet (UCLA 1992), a California entrepreneur and former U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, was named to the U.S. Presidential Advisory Committee on the Arts this past May.
Created in 1958, the council is an advisory body to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Its members act as “arts ambassadors” that amplify the center’s reach and influence throughout the United States.
Mamet was born in Manhattan Beach and earned a B.A. in political science from UCLA in 1992 with a focus on international relations. He went on to spend roughly a decade in politics, first working on Senate and presidential campaigns in California and then serving as a senior advisor and national finance director for U.S. Representative Dick Gephardt (D-MO) from 1995 to 2003.
Later in his career, he served on President Barack Obama’s National Finance Committee in 2012 and co-chaired Ambassadors for Biden in 2020 while also serving as a member of the presidential candidate’s Latin American Advisory Council.
Mamet was a founder, in 2004, of the consulting firm NMA Consulting Partners and is currently chairman for the Americas at Delphos International, a consulting firm that helps secure and equity financing for companies working in emerging markets. He also sits on the advisory boards of Globant, DirecTV Latin America, the Latin American Program of the Wilson Center and the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator.
Mamet was the U.S. Ambassador to Argentina from 2015 to 2017, during which he worked to successfully improve bilateral ties in multiple spheres, including economic development, security, technology, entrepreneurship, renewable energy and education. In addition to creating a private sector–financed Friends of Fulbright Scholarship Program to enable Argentinean undergraduates to study in the U.S., he founded a program that sent over 400 Argentine educators to UCLA for professional development programs at the School of Education and Information Studies.
In 2016, then Ambassador Mamet hosted both President Obama for an official visit to Argentina and, later in the year, a UCLA delegation led by Chancellor Gene Block and Vice Provost Cindy Fan.
His contributions to U.S.-Argentine relations earned him the Medal of San Martín of the Republic of Argentina, making him only the third American to receive the distinction in over 200 years. As ambassador, he also received the “Bridges of the Americas” award of the Argentine Centro de Estudios Americanos for his promotion of bilateral educational, cultural and professional exchanges.
After returning from Latin America, Mamet became a senior advisor on Latin America at the law firm DLA Piper. He delivered the UCLA International Institute 2019 commencement address and has given public lectures at his alma mater several times in recent years, including at the Center for Global Management of the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Interested in the arts? Check out the UCLA Chancellor's Arts Initiative and the GoArts webpage, a comprehensive listing of arts programming across schools and divisions on campus.
Published: Tuesday, July 18, 2023
