On April 11, President Obama announced his intent to nominate Jay Nicholas Anania to be the next Ambassador to Suriname, which is the smallest independent nation in South America and the only independent Dutch-speaking nation in the Western Hemisphere. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, Anania is expected to be confirmed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Born circa 1960 in Silver Spring, Maryland, Anania earned a B.A. in History at Kenyon College in 1981 and an M.B.A. at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He joined the Foreign Service in 1985, serving early foreign postings at the consulate general in Tijuana, Mexico; at the Interests Section in Havana, Cuba; and at the embassies in Amman, Jordan, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, and Hong Kong, China, where he served as management officer from 1999 to 2002.

In Washington at the State Department, Anania served as director of the Office of Management Policy from 2002 to 2005 and acting chief information officer in the Bureau of Information Resource Management from 2005 to January 2006. In 2003, he established and led the department’s Office of Rightsizing the U.S. Government Overseas Presence. From 2006 to 2009, Anania was minister-counselor for Management Affairs at the embassy in Berlin, Germany, where he also served for seven months as acting deputy chief of mission. From 2009 to 2011, he served as executive director of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs and the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs. Since 2011, he has served as management counselor at the embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.

Anania and his wife, Lourdes, have a college-age son named Nicholas.

-Matt Bewig

Jay Anania (by Kellie Lunney, Government Executive)