Associate Chief of Staff for Policy Eric Griego Montoya, PhD

For the past three decades Eric has worked as a researcher, analyst and policy maker on applied public policy issues ranging from economic development to early childhood education at the local, state, national and international level. For the first ten years of his career, he worked on international economic and labor issues at three federal agencies and on Capitol Hill.

He returned home to New Mexico in 1999 and was elected to the Albuquerque City Council in 2001, where he co-sponsored and helped pass and implement an increase in the minimum wage, one of the nation’s first local public financing systems for elections and the city’s most progressive planning document in its history. In 2005 he was appointed Assistant Cabinet Secretary for Economic Development under Governor Richardson, where he led state efforts on community and local economic development.

In 2008 he was elected to the NM State Senate where he championed progressive tax reform, passed legislation promoting green jobs and led legislative action on several issues affecting the state’s working children and families. For four years, before leaving to run for Congress in 2012, he also ran the largest and most active anti-poverty advocacy, research and policy organization, New Mexico Voices for Children.

From 2014-2020 he was a research fellow at the Center for Social Policy (formerly the Center for Health Policy) at the University of New Mexico, where his teaching and research focused on sustainable economic development, social capital and public policy. From 2017-2021 he was also State Director of the New Mexico Working Families Party, a state affiliate of the national WFP.

He holds a bachelor’s degree in government and journalism from New Mexico State University, a master’s in public management from the University of Maryland, and a master’s and doctorate in political science from the University of New Mexico.

He was raised and currently lives in the Barelas neighborhood with his wife Kimberly, son Lucas and two rescue dogs Tater and Daisy.