An experienced diplomat who has served there before and speaks the Portuguese language was nominated by President Obama on March 29, 2012, to be the next ambassador to the southern African nation of Mozambique. Born circa 1964, Douglas M. Griffiths earned a B.A. in Government at Notre Dame University in 1986 and a Masters in Public Policy from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School.
Griffiths joined the Foreign Service in 1988 and served early career foreign postings in Québec City, Canada; Lisbon, Portugal; and Maputo, Mozambique; before returning to Washington, D.C. After completing the State Department economic course, Griffiths served on the South Africa desk during that country’s transition to democracy. Griffiths made use of his economic education, serving as first secretary for economic affairs at the embassy in Rabat, Morocco, from 1996 to 1999, and as counselor for International Economic Affairs at the U.S. Mission in Geneva, Switzerland, from 2000 to 2004. He was then deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires ad interim at the embassy in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, from 2004 to 2006, which included the difficult period after the coup against the popularly elected President, Jean-Bertrande Aristide.
From 2006 to 2009, he was the principal officer at the consulate general in Guayaquil, Ecuador, also during a tense period after Ecuador and the U.S. expelled one another’s ambassadors. Since 2009, Griffiths has been deputy permanent representative to the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland.
Griffiths is married and has two children. He speaks French, Portuguese and Spanish.
-Matt Bewig
Green Diplomacy on Display at U.S. Mission (by James Kanter, New York Times)
