Aileen Cardona-Arroyo, PhD

Aileen Cardona-Arroyo, Ph.D., partner, specializes in strategic messaging on policy issues and persuasive political communication to engage the American public and mobilize and expand the electorate. At Hart, Aileen works with advocacy groups campaigns, party committees, and independent expenditures, including Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Senate Majority PAC, DCCC, DCCC IE, HMP, and Priorities USA.

Aileen is a recognized expert on Latino political behavior and has been invited to offer political commentary on MSNBC, NBC News, ABC News, NPR and CNN en español. She led research for the DCCC’s Latino constituency program in 2024 and is also part of the NBC News polling team, where she has led research on Latino voters for Telemundo. At Hart, Aileen has worked with countless clients on strategic communication to Latino voters, including UnidosUS and the Raben Group.

Previously, Aileen was a political science professor and director of Latino Studies at Pace University. She is a former Post-Doctoral Fellow at Southern Methodist University’s J.G. Tower Center for Political Studies, where she served as a bridge between academic researchers and policymakers and other stakeholders.

Aileen earned her PhD in government from Cornell University and has extensive training in a diverse set of quantitative and qualitative research methods. A native of San Juan, Puerto Rico, she is fully bilingual and received her BA in political science from the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras Campus. She resides in Washington, DC, with her husband and two daughters.