Marc Stanley

On August 6, 2021, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Marc Stanley to be the next United States Ambassador to Argentina. In his opening statement at his confirmation hearing, Stanley related his family’s immigrant heritage:

That story finds its roots in small villages in Belarus, Ukraine and Poland. My father’s family first made their way to Brooklyn, New York, with little to their name. My mother’s father fled pogroms in the early 1900s and landed in London, before his daughter eventually crossed the Atlantic at the age of 19 to reach America’s shores as well.

Stanley attended George Washington University (B.B.A., 1979) and the University of Texas School of Law (J.D., 1982).

He founded the Stanley Law Group, a Dallas-based firm that focuses on national class actions and complex litigation. He has been a trial lawyer for nearly 40 years and is a former president of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association.

He got his start in politics as an undergraduate working for three years with Representatives Morris K. Udall (D-AZ) and Dale E. Kildee (D-MI), and with the Committee on House Administration. In that role, he created the first Telephone Directory for the U.S. House of Representatives, serving as its editor from 1977-1979.

He later served as Dallas County Chair for Senator Lloyd Bentsen’s Senate campaign in 1988 and Governor Ann Richards’ campaign when she ran for governor in1990. He also chaired Lawyers for Biden in 2019-2020.

His political activism led to his appointments as Chairman of the Texas Public Finance Authority by Texas Governor Ann Richards, as a Member of the Board of Visitors of the Air University of the United States Air Force by Secretary of Defense William Cohen, and as a Council Member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum by President Barack Obama.

He has also been active in Jewish politics, serving for six years as chairman of the National Jewish Democratic Council and, at the time of his nomination, as ambassador a board member of the Israel Policy Forum. He is the past chair of The Legacy Senior Communities, Inc., a Jewish-sponsored, not-for-profit charitable organization providing continuing care retirement communities and in-home care for seniors and their families. He also has supported the Jewish Community Center, Temple Emanu-El, and the North Texas Food Bank.

During his confirmation he said his career and his activism have been motivated by his Jewish values.

Throughout my life, public service, the pursuit of justice, the desire to give back and repair the world — what in Judaism we call tikkun olam — have always been a central part of my identity: as a young intern and staffer on Capitol Hill, as a lawyer, as a volunteer, as an activist in everything from the fight to rescue Soviet Jewry to the cause of a safer State of Israel to leadership roles in local and national nonprofits and serving in state and federal government.

If confirmed as ambassador, Stanley said he would press the government of Argentina to fully investigate and prosecute the perpetrators of the 1994 terrorist bombing of the Associación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. “This is not a Jewish issue. This an affront on Argentina,” Stanley said. “Eighty-five people died and they weren’t all Jews… I think all Argentines should be upset about it, and I think there should be a demand of this government, the judiciary [to] prosecute and find out who’s responsible and get justice.”

Marc and his wife Wendy live in Dallas and have three grown children.

Sources: Marc Rod, “Marc Stanley presses for AMIA bombing accountability during Senate hearing,” IsraelInsider, (October 27, 2021).
“Marc R. Stanley,” Stanley Law Group.
Ron Kampeas, “Biden taps Marc Stanley, prominent Texas Jewish Democrat, as envoy to Argentina,” JTA, (August 10, 2021).