U.S. Embassy in Turkmenistan

Elizabeth Rood, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, is the United States Ambassador to Turkmenistan.   Her previous assignments include Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia; Faculty Advisor at the U.S. Army War College; Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, Georgia; and Political Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan.  Ambassador Rood directed the State Department’s Office of Export Control Cooperation in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation, the Office of Caucasus Affairs and Regional Conflicts in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, and the Foreign Service Institute’s Stability Operations Division.  Additionally, she served as Principal Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Peshawar, Pakistan.  Ambassador Rood served as the State Department’s representative on the U.S. Provincial Reconstruction Team in Paktika Province in southeastern Afghanistan, as well as Deputy to the U.S. Special Negotiator for the Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Transnistria conflicts.  Previous assignments include the Nonproliferation Bureau; the U.S. Mission to the International Organizations in Vienna, Austria; the U.S. Consulate General in Duesseldorf, Germany; and U.S. Embassies in Vienna, Austria, and Moscow, Russia.  Ambassador Rood is the recipient of numerous State Department performance awards, including three Senior Foreign Service Performance Awards.  A native of North Carolina, she holds an MA from the University of Maryland and an AB from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.  Her languages include Russian, French, German, Pashto, Dari, Georgian, and Turkmen.