Andrea Tanco serves as Special Assistant to the President and as Associate Policy Analyst at the Migration Policy Institute (MPI). In her role as Special Assistant, she supports President Andrew Selee on MPI’s strategic positioning, institution building, development of new initiatives, leadership, and board management. As an Associate Policy Analyst, she provides qualitative and quantitative research support across programs.

Ms. Tanco joined MPI from the Wilson Center’s Mexico Institute, where she developed strategic projects to inform policymakers and the public on the importance of the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Prior to her work with the Mexico Institute, she conducted research for Robin Wright, a joint fellow with the Wilson Center and the U.S. Institute of Peace, on security and political developments in the Middle East for the digital project “The Islamists Are Coming.” Earlier, she was a Grant Research Task Force Volunteer at Collateral Repair Project, an urban refugee-assisting nonprofit based in Amman, Jordan, where she conducted field research on forced migration in Jordan.

She holds a bachelor’s degree in government and a secondary degree in international relations from Smith College, where she focused on relations between the United States and the Middle East and Latin America. She is also an alumna of the Li Po Chun United World College of Hong Kong.