Fellow Highlights

New Play by 1999 Fellow and Former Ambassador Julissa Reynoso Opens at The Public Theater

March 11, 2026

Public Charge covers some of Julissa’s time working in the US Department of State, including efforts to relocate people detained at the Guantánamo Bay detention center.

Julissa Reynoso has had a wide-ranging and fulfilling career in government that—over nearly two decades and between stints in private law practice—has included positions as a deputy U.S. secretary of state overseeing Central America and the Caribbean, chief of staff to First Lady Jill Biden, and ambassadorships to Uruguay and Spain and Andorra under two presidents.

Her new play, which opens at The Public Theater this week, focuses on just a fraction of that, highlighting a few of the pressing issues she confronted while working for then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during the presidency of Barack Obama. That’s not because of any shortage of material in her later roles under President Joe Biden, but due instead to the relatively limited scope of a work of art. Unlike a life or a career in progress, she jokes, “you have to finish” a play. “You have to set up a story, a plot.”

In Public Charge, which Julissa cowrote with a fellow lawyer-playwright, the plot is thick: It follows Julissa, a political appointee, as she and others address the devastating 2010 earthquake in Haiti, reestablish diplomatic ties with the Cuban government, and seek to relocate Guantánamo Bay detainees in an effort to close the detention center there. But it is the message of the play that Julissa hopes will resonate with people, especially in a time of so much uncertainty in the United States and around the world.

“If you believe in people and the decency of people and the potential to do good, then you can believe in government. I have to keep the faith.”
Julissa Reynoso, partner at Winston & Strawn

Artwork for the Public Theater’s 2026 production of Public Charge.

“The play is about the government and diplomacy and public servants trying to do good things,” she says. “We need to understand what they do and why they’re important. We’ve forgotten that, or we didn’t really, fully comprehend that. Having good people—not only political people but career people—in our government is so important.”

Public service has been a defining component in Julissa’s life. Born in the rural interior of the Dominican Republic—she did not have electricity or running water for part of her childhood—she lived with her extended family until she joined her parents, who had immigrated to New York after she was born. Julissa grew up in the Bronx, where she saw how a community of people from different backgrounds could care for each other.

“It is and was a very poor neighborhood,” she says, “but there were so many good people—neighbors helping my parents, making sure I had a safe experience. There was a lot of unity.”

Julissa studied political science at Harvard University and earned a master of philosophy at the University of Cambridge before attending Columbia Law School as a 1999 recipient of the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans. The fellowship, she says, “changed my life.”

“I was free to be more open to doing things like public service,” she says.

After clerking for a federal judge for two years, Julissa joined a law firm where she focused on international arbitration and investment treaty disputes. She also took on pro bono work and, outside of the firm, advocated for labor and immigrants’ rights. She became an active volunteer for Democratic political candidates, including Al Gore, John Kerry, Clinton, Obama, and Biden. In an interview at City College of New York last year, she said part of public service is showing up for what’s required; she recalled door-knocking in frigid temperatures in Iowa on her birthday in January 2008.

“These are the types of things you’ve got to do—not just showing up for the cocktail parties and the events that are pleasant,” she said. “It becomes a small circle; after a while, people start remembering who you are… you… get pulled in.”

When Clinton became US secretary of state, she invited Julissa to join her team. It was a leap of faith for Julissa—“I didn’t have a job title,” she told City College—but politics and policy had always been of interest, she says.

“I just thought it was the way to have the most impact,” she says. “If you can change policy and the way people look at problems and institutions, you can transform society.”

Eventually, Julissa was tasked with helping oversee issues in Central America and the Caribbean. From 2012 to 2014, she served as ambassador to Uruguay. She then returned to her private law practice until 2020 when she served as assistant to President Biden and chief of staff to First Lady Jill Biden. She served as cochair of the White House’s Gender Policy Council and was also there for COVID-19 recovery efforts; the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan; and the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol.

“That was one of the most intense, most rewarding, complicated times of my life,” she said at City College. “You name it; we had it.”

In 2021, Julissa was appointed ambassador to Spain and Andorra, the first woman to hold that position. Since 2024, she has been a partner at Winston & Strawn where she focuses on complex commercial litigation, regulatory enforcement, international arbitration, and cross-border disputes.

Julissa says she has always loved theater, even as a kid—“I thought it was the closest thing to real life in the arts,” she says.

Public Charge is her first play; she began writing it shortly after she left the Obama administration (it was listed as an asset, without any ascertainable value, on her public disclosure report when she was nominated to the Spain and Andorra ambassadorship).

“You see movies about foreign policy or the State Department or working in the government,” she explains, “and I didn’t think they were reflective of my experience. In my view, it was too simplified. The work of public servants is much more nuanced—more complicated and hard.”

Julissa’s co-author, Michael J. Chepiga, is an award-winning playwright who also happened to be her boss at the firm she joined after law school.

“He was inspiring to me: ‘Lawyers can write plays!’” she remembers thinking. “We decided to work on this together.”

In addition to Julissa, the characters in the play include Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff in the State Department; Judy Gross, the wife of a political prisoner released from Cuba; and José Mujica, the late president of Uruguay, who agreed to take detainees from Guantánamo Bay. There’s even a Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship connection: One of the lawyers for the detainees transferred to Uruguay was Ramzi Kassem, a 2001 fellow and now chief counsel for New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

Ramzi is not in the play, but, Julissa says, one of his clients is mentioned.

Julissa says her work in diplomacy was informed by her personal background.

“I always tell people I learned about foreign policy on the streets of New York,” she says. Meanwhile, “immigrants understand the world and how important it is to talk to different people because we’ve had to adapt to changing communities and environments.”

Julissa says she hopes her play will help others appreciate the positive impact governments and public servants can have.

“The government is made up of people,” she says. “If you believe in people and the decency of people and the potential to do good, then you can believe in government. I have to keep the faith.”