David Smolansky

David Smolansky Urosa (born 27 May 1985) is a Venezuelan journalist and politician who has served as Deputy Director of the Comando Con Venezuela in Washington D.C. since 2023. A member of Vente Venezuela, he previously served as Mayor of El Hatillo Municipality in Miranda from 2013 to 2017, and Special Envoy of the Organization of American States for the Venezuelan migrants and refugee crisis.

Smolansky is an SNF Agora Institute fellow at Johns Hopkins University, where he serves as a visiting professor, researcher, and speaker on democracy, migration, and global authoritarianisms. Smolansky is also a senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation.

Early life Smolansky was born in Caracas, Venezuela in May 1985. He is a second generation descendant of immigrants who left the Communist bloc. His grandparents fled Ukraine when it was part of the Soviet Union and settled in Cuba where they lived for 43 years; in 1970, they escaped from Cuba to Venezuela when his father was 13 years old. The son of a Jewish father and a Catholic mother, he received a multicultural and multireligious family education.

Education Smolansky received his Bachelor's degree in Journalism from the Andres Bello Catholic University, and a Master's degree in International Public Policy from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He also served as a visiting fellow of the Competitiveness Leadership Program at Georgetown University, and a Draper Hills Fellow at Stanford University Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. Smolansky is currently an SNF Agora institute fellow at Johns Hopkins University, where he serves as a visiting professor, researcher, and speaker on democracy, migration, and global authoritarianism.

Persecution and exile Smolansky was forced into exile in 2017, after the regime-controlled Supreme Court issued Smolansky with an illegal arrest warrant, voided his passport, removed him from office, and arbitrarily banned him from holding public positions.

Awards and recognition Smolansky was recognized by the Junior Chamber International as World's Outstanding Young Politician 2015. In the same year, he won the Heinz-Sontag Award for Youth from the Hannah Arendt Observatory in Venezuela. He was identified by Americas Quarterly as one of the ten leaders who would help rebuild Venezuela after the present regime. In 2018, he was recognized with the Global Competitiveness Leadership Impact award by Georgetown University.