A native of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Patterson received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Reed College, MA and MPhil degrees from Columbia University and an MA from the U.S. Naval War College. 

 

He served in the U.S. Air Force and received an honorable discharge in 1974. 

 

Patterson began his State Department career in 1985, serving first in Toronto, and then in the Office of Soviet Affairs in Washington, D.C., and in Leningrad. He has also served as chief of the political/internal office in Moscow and has headed the political sections at U.S. embassies in Hungary, Ukraine and Armenia. 

 

Prior to becoming ambassador to Turkmenistan, Patterson served as counselor for Somalia affairs at the U.S. embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.

 

Patterson speaks Russian, Ukrainian, Hungarian and German. He is married to fellow Foreign Service Officer Inmi Patterson, who is currently the U.S. Consul General in Hamburg, Germany. 

 

Turkmenistan was a constituent republic in the Soviet Union until it declared its independence in December 1991, a day before dissolution of the U.S.S.R.

 

Official Biography  (U.S. Embassy Turkmenistan)