President Barack Obama on February 26 nominated a senior foreign service officer whose 22-year State Department career has focused on Asia and Latin America to be the next ambassador to the eastern European nation of Ukraine. Geoffrey Pyatt will succeed career diplomat John F. Tefft, who served as ambassador to Kyiv starting in November 2009.
Born circa 1963, Geoffrey Ross Pyatt grew up in the wealthy San Diego suburb of La Jolla, California, and earned a B.A. in Political Science at the University of California at Irvine in 1985, and an M.A. in International Relations at Yale in 1987.
Prior to joining the Foreign Service in 1990, Pyatt worked with The Inter-American Dialogue, a Washington-based think tank. At the State Department, Pyatt’s early career assignments included stints as economic officer and vice-consul at the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, from 1990-9192; political officer at the embassy in New Delhi, India, from 1992-1994; staff assistant to the assistant secretary of state for Latin America in 1994; special assistant to the deputy secretary of state from 1995 to 1996, and director for Latin America on the National Security Council staff from 1996 to 1997.
Pyatt served as principal officer of the American Consulate in Lahore, Pakistan, from 1997 to 1999, followed by service as American consulate general in Hong Kong, China, from 1999 to 2002. Returning to India, from 2002 to 2007 Pyatt served at the embassy in New Delhi, first as minister counselor for Political Affairs and as deputy chief of mission from June 2006 to July 2007.
When WikiLeaks published State Department cables, Pyatt became embroiled in controversy because of a May 4, 2007, cable he sent recommending that K.V. Rajan, a secretary in the Ministry of External Affairs and a member of the Prime Minister's National Security Advisory Board (NSAB) visit Washington DC in order to help “feed” U.S. government views on Iran into the Indian system.
For his first European posting, Pyatt served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency and Other International Organizations in Vienna, Austria, from August 2007 to May 2010, when he was named principal deputy assistant secretary of the South and Central Asia Affairs Bureau.
Pyatt and his wife Mary (née Detchmendy) have two children, William and Claire.
Obama Nominates Candidate for New US Ambassador to Ukraine (by Interfax-Ukraine, Kyiv Post)
