Carla Dirlikov Canales

Carla Dirlikov Canales recently served the Biden Administration in a newly created role as Senior Advisor and Envoy for Cultural Exchange at the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities. Canales has been a Fellow at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government since 2022, where she has led a co-curricular course for the Center for Public Leadership.  She is also a Visiting Professor at the Korbel School of International Studies and has served as a U.S. State Department Arts Envoy since 2005.

Canales has been a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities Turnaround Arts Program, was selected by Foreign Policy Magazine as one of its 100 Leading Global Thinkers and won the Medal of Excellence from the Sphinx Organization, which was presented to her at the Supreme Court by Justice Sotomayor. She was also named one of Musical America’s 30 Movers and Shapers of 2018. In each case, she was the first opera singer ever to receive the honor. Canales has been a guest speaker at the United Nations, Oxford University, the Aspen Institute, and has been a guest writer for the New York Times. She is fluent in Spanish, French, Italian, German, and English and is currently studying Mandarin. She is a lifetime member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

As a classical singer, Canales has been in demand for her portrayal of Bizet’s Carmen, a role she has performed over eighty times in twelve countries. She is the founder of The Canales Project, a non-profit arts and advocacy organization through which she created Hear Her Song, a musical celebration of distinguished female leaders.