Ambassador Barbara K. Bodine is an Associate Fellow within the Global Fellowship Initiative of the GCSP. Ambassador Barbara K. Bodine is a Distinguished Professor in the Practice of Diplomacy and the Director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at the Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.
Her 33-year Foreign Service career was spent on the broader Arab Gulf region with a dual focus on security/counterterrorism and governance/development. She served as U.S. ambassador to Yemen from 1997 through 2001, and in Kuwait and Iraq as Deputy Chief of Mission. She received the Secretary of State’s Award for Valor for her work in occupied Kuwait in 1990 and returned to Iraq in April 2003 as part of the US reconstruction effort.
Ambassador Bodine also served as Coordinator for Counterterrorism Operations and acting overall Coordinator and Director of East African Affairs, among other assignments. Since leaving the Foreign Service, she has been a Senior Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government and MIT, and, for seven years, a lecturer and director of the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative at Princeton University. She is a member of the Council of Foreign Relations and a past board member of the American Academy of Diplomacy
She is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy in Massachusetts.