Thomas Melia

In this role Tom Melia was responsible for planning oversight hearings across a worldwide range of issues.  He was also the Senior Professional Staff Member handling the European region, including the OSCE, NATO and the EU, as well as public diplomacy and international public broadcasting, and anti-corruption initiatives and legislation.

Prior to this, Melia was Senior Foreign Policy Advisor to Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Maryland) from March 2021, responsible for advising the senator on a global range of issues and serving as staff director of the Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on management and oversight of the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other agencies.

Melia served in the Obama Administration as USAID's Assistant Administrator for Europe and Eurasia (2015–2017) and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (2010–2015). 

Melia began his career as a research assistant to U.S. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and eventually became the senator’s Senior Legislative Assistant for foreign and defense policy. He left in 1986 to become associate director of the Free Trade Union Institute of the AFL-CIO (now the Solidarity Center).

From 1988 to 2001, he worked at the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI).  From 1988 to 1993, he directed NDI’s Central and Eastern Europe Programs, bringing the institute to the region before the fall of the Berlin Wall to provide information and assistance to emerging political parties and civic organizations. This included pre-election and post-election programs in Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and Albania.  From 1993 to 1996, he directed NDI's Middle East Programs (working principally in the West Bank and Gaza, in Yemen, Egypt and Jordan). He simultaneously launched the Institute's Democratic Governance programs.  Melia then served as NDI's Vice President for Programs from 1996 to 2001. From 2005 to 2010, Melia was vice president of Freedom House, the bipartisan human rights research and advocacy organization.  He was director of the Washington office of the writers organization, PEN America from 2018 until he joined Senator Cardin in 2021.

Melia earned a BA from The Johns Hopkins University and an MA from JHU’s School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). He has been a visiting professor at his alma mater, as well as at Georgetown and Princeton Universities.  He has published widely on issues of democracy and governance.