Julieta Valls Noyes, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, currently serves as the Deputy Director of the Foreign Service Institute of the U.S. Department of State. Prior to this assignment, she was U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Croatia, a NATO Ally and member of the European Union. From 2013-2015, Ambassador Noyes held the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, where she was responsible for managing relations with twelve countries in Western Europe and the European Union. As Deputy Executive Secretary for the Department of State from 2011-2013, Ambassador Noyes managed trips and oversaw the preparation of briefing materials for two Secretaries of State. She organized close to twenty trips, traveling over 200,000 miles, and visiting every continent. Ambassador Noyes was Chargé d’Affaires, a.i., and Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy to the Holy See from 2008-2011. Ambassador Noyes has also served as Deputy Director of the Operations Center, the 24-hour crisis management and communications center of the State Department; Director of the Office of Multilateral and Global Affairs in the bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor; and in domestic and overseas positions in the Bureaus of European and Western Hemisphere Affairs. As Political Chief at the U.S. Embassy in Panama from 1999-2002, she negotiated a status of forces agreement, an achievement for which she earned a Distinguished Service Award. Ambassador Noyes speaks Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and some French and Croatian. A graduate of Wellesley College, she has a Master’s Degree from the Eisenhower College of the National Defense University. She is the recipient of numerous Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards. She is married to Nicholas Noyes, Jr., a retired Foreign Service Officer, and they have three children.

Annika Betancourt serves as Peru desk officer and is currently dual-hatted as Deputy Director for the Office of Andean Affairs. She recently concluded the CFR International Affairs Fellowship at the Brookings Institution focusing on U.S.-North Korea confidence-building measures. On the DPRK desk in Washington, DC, Annika played a critical role in the release of UVA student Otto Warmbier from North Korea. Annika joined the Foreign Service in 2011 and has also served in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico; Athens, Greece; and Kabul, Afghanistan. Annika has a B.A. from the University of Maryland and a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University. Mary Vargas joined the Foreign Service in 2008. She is serving as Trade and Investment Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City where she leads post’s engagement with the Government of Mexico on implementation of the United States-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement (USMCA). During a four year tour in Jerusalem, Mary developed policy recommendations for Gaza post-war reconstruction and designed technical assistance programs to improve West Bank water and energy infrastructure. She has also served as a Refugee Coordinator in Baghdad, Iraq; political officer in Karachi, Pakistan; and consular officer in Tijuana, Mexico. Mary has a B.A. from The George Washington University and an M.A. from the University of California in San Diego. Learn more about Diverse Diplomacy https://www.diversediplomacy.com/ Produced with support from the Una Chapman Cox Foundation's project on American Diplomacy and the Foreign Service. Recorded: February 4, 2021

Mirembe Nantongo recently retired from the State Department after a 25-year career as a Foreign Service Generalist. Of Ugandan and Dutch parentage, she first worked for State as a Locally Employed staff member at U.S. Embassy Kampala, then spent six years as an Eligible Family Member before joining A-100 as a Foreign Service officer in 1995. She served and lived in Latin America, the Middle East, Africa and Washington, D.C. Although coned as a political officer, she worked in all five Foreign Service cones, served twice as a deputy chief of mission and, finally, as a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Global Talent Management. Both her sons were born under the Foreign Service umbrella and spent their childhoods in international schools overseas. Influenced by Embassy Marine Security Guards in various assignments, both ended up as U.S. Marines themselves—one now on active duty and the other recently graduated from college. Mirembe retired in order to spend more time with her aging mother who lives in the Netherlands. Learn more about Diverse Diplomacy https://www.diversediplomacy.com/​ Produced with support from the Una Chapman Cox Foundation's project on American Diplomacy and the Foreign Service.

Lawrence Randolph joined the U.S. Department of State as a career Foreign Service Officer in 2003. He is slated to be the next Consul General at the U.S. Consulate General in Casablanca, Morocco. He is currently a Senior Advisor in the Bureau for Global Talent Management (GTM). Prior to this assignment, he was the Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. at the U.S. Embassy in Algiers, Algeria from 2016-2019. As the Deputy Chief of Mission, Lawrence managed a team of almost 500 and oversaw the transition of the Embassy from an unaccompanied to fully accompanied mission. Lawrence has also served as Public Affairs Officer in U.S. Consulate General Frankfurt, Germany where he coordinated all Public Affairs programming in Southwest Germany. His additional prior overseas postings include Kabul, Dhahran, and Cairo. Lawrence speaks Spanish, French, Arabic, and German. He holds a Bachelors degree from Morehouse College and a Masters Degree from Columbia University.

Julie Chung assumed the position of Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs in November 2018. She was previously the Director for Japan in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs and served as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary from February-September 2018. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor, she held positions as the Deputy Chief of Mission in Cambodia and Economic Counselor in Thailand. Ms. Chung served as the Deputy Political Counselor in Bogota, where she managed the U.S. government’s largest extradition program, including paramilitary and narco-trafficking cases. As the United States representative to the G24 in Bogota, Ms. Chung led initiatives focused on demining, labor, and human rights. In Baghdad, she served as Chief of Staff coordinating civilian-military foreign assistance with thirteen agencies and sections, and managed the interagency Emergency Assistance Coordination Team in response to suicide bombings. While working in the Office of Korean Affairs in Washington, she frequently traveled to the DPRK to implement the U.S.-North Korea Agreed Framework. She also served in Guangzhou, Tokyo, and Hanoi as a public diplomacy officer and APEC coordinator. Ms. Chung is from Huntington Beach, California and joined the Foreign Service in 1996 as the first cohort of the Thomas R. Pickering Fellowship program. She received a B.A. in Political Science from the University of California San Diego and an M.A. in International Affairs from Columbia University. Her foreign languages include Korean, Japanese, Spanish, and Khmer. Ms. Chung is currently a senior advisor for The Pickering and Rangel Fellows Association (PRFA) and the Asian American Foreign Affairs Association (AAFAA).

Greg is serving as a political officer in the Office for Israel and Palestinian Affairs. Previously, he served as the public diplomacy officer for India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Maldives. In that role, Greg developed a $1.15 million U.S.-India university research partnership initiative and also established exchange programs for leaders from the government, civil society, and media in the South Asia region. Prior to that, he has served in Kolkata and New Delhi, India and in the Office for Cuban Affairs. He is president of the Hispanic Employee Council for Foreign Affairs Agencies and a 2008 Rangel International Affairs Fellow. He also helped establish the Diversity and Inclusion Working Group for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. Originally from San Antonio, Greg holds a BA in international relations and political science from St. Mary's University and masters from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He speaks Spanish, Hindi, and Bengali. He was recently named a Latino Next Generation National Security & Foreign Policy Leader by New America & Diversity in National Security Network and returns to San Antonio regularly to encourage first-generation college students to consider careers in public service. David currently serves as the Honduras Desk Officer in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs (WHA) Office of Central American Affairs (WHA/CEN). In this capacity, he is the lead officer overseeing the planning and execution of U.S. foreign policy toward Honduras. David began his career supporting democracy and human rights programs in Latin America and the Caribbean, first as an implementer with a D.C-based non-profit organization and then with the Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL). While working in DRL’s Office of Global Programming, David managed programs supporting civil society and human rights in Cuba. Upon being awarded the Presidential Management Fellowship (PMF), David began work as a Staff Assistant in the WHA Front Office. As part of the PMF, David served as a Program Officer in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs (INL) on the Mexico desk. In this capacity, he coordinated INL’s foreign assistance programs in Mexico, specifically working to expand INL’s police professionalization and counternarcotics efforts throughout the country. He also served in the INL section at Embassy Tegucigalpa in the spring of 2018 where he coordinated programs aimed at preventing and reducing crime in Honduras, and improving Honduran National Police effectiveness in investigating major crimes. David graduated from Brown University with a bachelor’s degree in International Relations and received a Master’s of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.

U.S. Ambassador to the Kyrgyz Republic Donald Lu was sworn in on September 18, 2018. Prior to this assignment, Ambassador Lu was the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Albania. His overseas postings include Deputy Chief of Mission in India, Azerbaijan and Kyrgyzstan. He also served for a year as Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Azerbaijan. Ambassador Lu worked on the Ebola crisis in West Africa as Deputy Coordinator for Ebola Response in the State Department. Mr. Lu is from Huntington Beach, California. He graduated from Princeton University with both master’s and bachelor’s degrees in international relations. He is married to Dr. Ariel Ahart, and together they have two children, Kip, age 16, and Aliya, age 13. He speaks Albanian, Russian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Urdu, Hindi, and West African Krio. He enjoys biking, watching movies, traveling, and spending time with his family. Recorded: December 7, 2020