Yahaira Lopez

Yahaira Lopez is Senior Advisor for People Operations in the Office of the Director at the Office of Personnel Management under the Biden-Harris Administration. She previously served in two other roles at the Agency, first as a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility (DEIA) Advisor and then as Chief of Staff for Human Resources Solutions (HRS). Prior to her tenure at OPM, she served as Deputy Chief of Staff at the US Department of Energy overseeing operations within the Office of the Secretary.

Ms. Lopez has led operations management and human capital strategy for a variety of corporate, governmental and political organizations over a 20 year career. She served as Director of People Operations at Hawkfish LLC, and prior to that was Human Resources Director for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. During the Obama-Biden Administration, she worked across three different federal agencies, first managing environmental policy initiatives at the Department of Agriculture, and later pivoting to political personnel at the Department of Defense and the Department of Transportation. Her academic background is in natural resource conservation, which led her to work with several environmental nonprofit organizations as an educator and program manager for ten years.

She holds a B.S. in Biology from the University of Puerto Rico-Humacao and is a Certified Nonprofit Professional.