Personal & Mission Statement
I am a retired U.S. diplomat and lawyer with think tank and Capitol Hill experience whose State Department career included serving as the U.S. Embassy Berlin’s spokesperson. I would like to contribute to GAHF becoming a dynamic, program-rich, well-resourced national organization that highlights the historic and ongoing contributions of German-Americans by strengthening its engagement with the U.S. government, think tanks and other relevant policy organizations and its outreach to interested Americans and Germans in the U.S.
I am a retired U.S. diplomat, fluent in German, who recently worked with the European foreign press corps, including the German press corps, in Washington. My time at the State Department included a year as the spokesperson of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin in 2017-18, a short stint as a senior advisor on the Germany Desk, and two years as the Austria Desk Officer. I spent most of my career as a political officer and later as a public diplomacy officer working on European and South Asian issues.
In 2014-2015, as a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, I organized a “next generation” report to strengthen U.S.-German relations, to include selecting the six young German and six young American fellows to write it. In 2004-2005, I was a foreign affairs fellow for U.S. Senator John E. Sununu (R-NH).
Before joining State, I worked for two years as an associate for a law firm in New York City — Walter, Conston, Alexander & Green — that specialized in German business. I have a master’s degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins University SAIS, a law degree from Vanderbilt University, and a bachelor’s degree in history and German from Duke University. My junior year in college, I studied at the Philipps-Universität in Marburg, W. Germany. While in school, I also lived for two summers with German families in the Black Forest and Bavaria. I began learning German as a teenager when my father was posted to Frankfurt am Main with the U.S. Army.
I would be honored to serve as a 2nd Vice President after serving in 2022-2023 as a GAHF Director.