Mike Gonzalez, Vice President of Communications for The Heritage Foundation, is a widely experienced international correspondent, commentator and editor. Aside from this work as a journalist, he helped explain financial and foreign policy from inside the second Bush administration.

Gonzalez, who joined Heritage as communications chief in March 2009, is responsible for day-to-day messaging and media relations across domestic and foreign policy fronts, as well as for internal communications. He oversees three Communications divisions: Editorial Services, Broadcast Services and Strategic Communications.

A native of Havana, Cuba, Gonzalez emigrated to Queens, N.Y., with his family in 1974 after two years in Madrid, Spain. He honed his journalism skills as a reporter for the wire service Agence France-Presse from 1987 to 1993, covering such hot spots as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Cyprus, Panama and South Korea.

Next, in 11 years with The Wall Street Journal, Gonzalez wrote a column on the stock market in New York before being posted to Hong Kong in 1995 as deputy editor of the editorial pages of the Asia edition. He chronicled the rise of China and India and the Asian currency meltdown, among other issues.

Gonzalez went to Brussels in 1998 to assume similar duties for the Journal's Europe edition. He conceived of and commissioned the "Letter of Eight," a January 2003 piece by European leaders supporting the U.S. stance on Iraq. Published globally, it galvanized a pro-American coalition led by Britain, Spain and Italy, which for the first time challenged France and Germany for leadership of the European Union.

Gonzalez returned to Hong Kong in 2004 as editor of the Journal's Asian editorial pages, earning top honors from Amnesty International and the Foreign Correspondents' Club.

In 2005, inspired by President George W. Bush's call for America to end tyranny around the world, Gonzalez departed the newspaper to join the administration. He wrote speeches for Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox, then moved to the State Department in 2006 as communications adviser and speechwriter on European and Eurasian affairs.

Other key issues for Heritage where Gonzalez has experience include energy independence, European policy, public diplomacy, limited government, global finance, and the spread of free markets and democracy.

Gonzalez holds a bachelor's degree in communications from Boston's Emerson College and a master's in business administration from Columbia Business School. Fluent in Spanish and French, he reads Italian and Portuguese.

Gonzalez and his wife, Siobhan have three children.

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