Oscar Lopez III is the 13th UNA-USA Youth Observer to the UN!
The most critical role of the Youth Observer is to engage young Americans in the work of the UN, empowering them to be active participants to foster a greater global impact.
About Oscar
Get to Know Oscar Lopez III
Oscar Armando Lopez III is a researcher, writer, and artist from the U.S.-Mexico border. He holds a B.A. in Government and B.B.A. in Business Honors from the University of Texas at Austin. Inspired by his hometown of Laredo, Texas, Oscar’s work is dedicated to advancing climate action, human rights protections, and digital rights.
Since January 2023, he has served on the Advisory Board for the Born This Way Foundation, co-founded by Lady Gaga and her mother Cynthia Bissett Germanotta, where he has worked to break the stigma around mental health and to increase access to mental health resources for marginalized communities. Through his role on the Laredo Food Policy Council, he helped pass a plan to alleviate food deserts in his hometown.
After having learned that his hometown was deemed the “Worst Connected City” in the U.S., for the past five years, Oscar has worked to close the digital divide in the United States. In 2019, he was selected as the youngest-ever Google Public Policy Fellow where he worked with Public Knowledge and the National Hispanic Media Coalition on advocating for increased access to broadband internet, digital privacy, and ethical AI. His work led up to him authoring a filing, submitted to the Federal Communications Commission, detailing the need to improve nationwide broadband maps. He continued his work as a Public Policy Fellow at Next Century Cities where he led research on the economic and educational effects of the digital divide and advocated for the inclusion of broad access funding in the American Rescue Plan.
In the summer of 2021, he worked as a Summer Analyst at Goldman Sachs where he worked to expand access to venture capital funding to women and minority-founded companies for the firm’s $1 Billion Launch With GS initiative, and in the spring of 2022 he advanced the Biden-Harris administration’s federal climate policy as a White House intern with the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
Following reports that showed that the Rio Grande, Laredo’s only source of water, could run out of water within the next two decades, Oscar co-founded the El Rio Es Vida Coalition—a collection of organizations, scientists, community members, and advocates dedicated to helping guide the process of finding solutions to the border’s water crisis.
At the University of Texas at Austin, Oscar was the first student of Central American descent to serve as Speaker of the Student Government Assembly. From May 2019 to May 2020 and May 2021 to May 2022, he held a seat on the Student Services Budget Committee where he worked with his peers to allocate the committee’s $41 million budget toward initiatives that would expand mental health resources for students and increase diversity on campus. As a Mellon Foundation Engaged Scholar Initiative Fellow, he conducted a year-long, funded research project on the effects that ethylene oxide emissions had on his hometown, the needs of community members, and the policy changes that would provide relief for those affected.
As an artist, his photography has been exhibited in galleries and museums across Texas. He is currently an Artist-In-Residence with the Daphne Art Foundation where he is developing a project focused on documenting joy on the border.
Oscar has spoken about his research and work at numerous conferences including the Opportunities for Bipartisan Tech Policy Conference and TedxUTAustin.
Overall, his work has earned him his university’s Texas Exes President’s Leadership Award.
