Ray Walser, Ph.D., served as a career Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State from January 1980 to September 2007. As a political officer, he was assigned to Managua, Nicaragua, Bogota, Colombia, Guadalajara, Mexico, San Jose, Costa Rica, and Cape Town, South Africa.  In the Department, he held assignments in the geographic bureaus for Africa, Europe, and the Western Hemisphere as an executive assistant, desk officer, policy analyst and speechwriter. During his career with State, Walser was a visiting professor at the United States Military Academy and chairman of Western Hemisphere Area Studies at the Foreign Service Institute.

Prior to joining the Department of State, Walser was an Assistant Professor of History and Acting Chairman of the Division of Social Sciences at Bluefield, College, Bluefield, Va. He was the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies.   

In October 2007, Walser joined the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C., as Senior Policy Analyst for Latin America. While at Heritage, he authored numerous research papers on U.S.-Latin American relations, organized and hosted policy-related public events, testified before both houses of Congress, published opinion and editorial pieces, engaged in overseas electoral observations and made frequent media appearances. In the 2012, Walser was named a co-chair for the Latin America Working Group in the Mitt Romney for President Campaign. Walser retired from the Heritage Foundation in August 2013.

Since retirement from Heritage, Walser has served as a consultant for Joint Special Operations University in Tampa, Florida, taught for the University of Georgia’s Washington Semester Program, and is, since 2019, Professor of Practice for Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations Washington Program.

A native of North Carolina, Walser holds an undergraduate degree and a Ph.D. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His wife Sandra hails from Nicaragua and he has three adult children and four grandchildren. He and Sandra live in Broadlands, Va.