Dennis Alvord

Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regional Affairs
Economic Development Administration
Washington, DC

Dennis Alvord serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Regional Affairs, directing and supervising the activities of the Economic Development Administration's (EDA) Office of Regional Affairs (ORA), which includes all six EDA Regional Offices, the Performance and National Programs Division, EDA’s Loan Guarantee Program, the Integrated Economic Development team, and EDA’s Organizational Development. He is the Grants Officer for the agency’s Regional Innovation Strategies program, which awards grants to state, local, non-profit and tribal organizations to create and sustain regional systems of innovation, entrepreneurship and venture capital development. Earlier in his career, Mr. Alvord served in EDA in various positions, including Acting Deputy Assistant Secretaries for ORA and External Affairs. He also led the bureau’s work with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development where he served as Vice-Chair of the Working Party on Territorial Policy in Urban Areas.

Previously, Mr. Alvord served as Senior Advisor to the Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Commerce. In this role, he worked on a broad portfolio of department-wide management, operations, program and policy issues. As Senior Advisor, he served as Co-Chair of the Department of Commerce's 2016-17 Presidential Transition, coordinating efforts across the Department and with the White House and President Elect's Transition Team. He has also served as Executive Director of BusinessUSA, a multiagency customer service initiative that promotes and improves access to business assistance resources, and as Executive Director of the Department of Commerce’s CommerceConnect initiative, which simplified access to the department’s business solutions.

Before joining the federal government, Mr. Alvord was a Project Manager in the Infrastructure Finance Group of the Bethesda, Maryland-based environmental and transportation consulting firm Apogee Research, Inc.

Mr. Alvord has a Master of Public Administration degree from George Washington University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the State University of New York College at Cortland. He is a recipient of the 2015 President’s Award for Customer Service.