The daughter of Eugene and Merlyn McCartney, she was born in 1959. Likins earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Spanish and international affairs from Mary Washington College in Virginia.

 

After graduating in 1981, Likins joined the Foreign Service. Her early assignments, all in Washington, DC, included special assistant to the deputy secretary of state; executive assistant to the under secretary for global affairs; director of the State Department’s Operations Center; and Honduras desk officer.

 

She also served overseas as a consular officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Monterrey, Mexico.

 

Her later assignments involved serving; chief of the political section at the U.S. Embassy in Asuncion, Paraguay; deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria (1995-1997); deputy executive secretary of the State Department; and U.S. ambassador to El Salvador (August 2000- June 2003). At the end of her term of service in El Salvador, Likins was accused by some locals of interfering with Salvadoran politics when she warned that if the Salvadoran people voted the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN) into power and the FMLN continued advocating “an end to privitizations,” it “could endanger investment.”

 

After leaving El Salvador, Likins served as principal deputy assistant secretary for political-military affairs in Washington, DC (2003-2006). In February 2005, she led a delegation to Nicaragua to deal with the continued presence of SA-7 shoulder-fired missiles in the country after an air-conditioning repairman was arrested trying to sell one.

 

Likins worked at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington, DC, first as dean of the Foreign Service Institute’s School of Professional and Area Studies from June 2006 until July 2007, and then as its deputy director.

 

Likins speaks Spanish and Bulgarian. She and her husband, John, have two sons, James and Kevin.

 

Rose M. Likins Biography (State Department)