Founder
Federico A. de Jesús is the Founder and Principal of FDJ Solutions, LLC. De Jesús, a Washington, DC-based consultant, has worked for more than 17 years at the highest levels of government, communications, and politics. De Jesús was the national Communications Director for Hispanic Media in the Obama for America 2008 Presidential Campaign where he helped to secure close to 70% of the Latino vote. He later performed the same role in the Office of the President-elect. Subsequently, he served for 4 years as a political appointee in the U.S. Department of Transportation as Associate Director for Governmental Affairs, where he was able to successfully shepherd 4 White House appointees through the Senate confirmation process and represented DOT on various interagency task forces.
Prior to the Obama campaign, de Jesús worked for close to 8 years on Capitol Hill in several capacities. As the Director of Hispanic Communications in U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s office, he helped craft the communications strategy during two crucial immigration reform legislative debates in 2006-07 and led the press operation during Sen. Reid’s first bi-partisan congressional delegation (CODEL) visit to Latin America as Majority Leader. De Jesús also served in a similar capacity for U.S. House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi for 3 years before that. In this role, he successfully helped to create and market the Compromiso Demócrata con el Pueblo Latino, which was the joint House/Senate Democratic agenda for Hispanic American families and was endorsed by the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA). He also worked for Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY), and for former Puerto Rico Resident Commissioner in Congress Aníbal Acevedo Vilá.
More recently, de Jesús served as Deputy Director of the Governor of Puerto Rico’s DC office, where he helped to manage over 20 employees in DC, NY, and FL representing the interests of Puerto Rico before Congress, federal agencies, state and local governments, as well as business and civil society actors. In this role, he succeeded in helping to include key provisions in the Senate Finance Committee’s staff discussion draft relating to the Commonwealth’s tax treatment, drafted and placed op-eds in key national publications, secured the filing of an amendment to the comprehensive immigration reform bill in the Senate to significantly boost resources in the fight against crime on the Island, and led other initiatives on behalf of the people of Puerto Rico. De Jesús is also the co-founder of BoricuActivatEd, and BoricuActívate, 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) groups respectively, that seek to empower, educate, and encourage civic engagement across the Puerto Rican Diaspora.
He has an M.A. degree in Social Enterprise from American University’s (AU) School of International Service, and a B.A. in Communications, Legal Institutions, Economics and Government (CLEG) from AU’s School of Public Affairs. As part of his M.A. program, de Jesús successfully completed a practicum project in which he consulted for Hungary’s National Innovation Office, leading a team of 3 student consultants to produce a report on how to maximize the use of crowd-funding in Hungary.
De Jesús appears regularly on Hispanic media & other outlets as a political commentator, and also remains active volunteering for several charitable causes, including: the Big Brother Big Sister Program of the National Capital Area, fundraising for disaster relief with the American Red Cross, and he currently serves as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA) working with D.C. foster youth. De Jesús is a native of Puerto Rico and has been living in Washington, D.C. since 1999.