# Biographies - United States Department of State

- Salman Ahmed Salman Ahmed is the Director of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff. Prior to assuming his post as Director in January 20, 2021, Mr. Ahmed was a Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he directed research and led a bipartisan task force dedicated to making U.S. foreign policy work better for the middle class. He also oversaw the review of the national security and foreign policy agencies for the Biden-Harris Transition Team. He served for 8 years in the Obama-Biden administration, including as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Strategic Planning at the National Security Council, and Chief of Staff of the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. Before joining the U.S. government, he served for almost 15 years with the United Nations, working mainly on the management and reform of the UN’s international peacekeeping machinery; co-drafting the UN Secretary-General’s landmark report on the Fall of Srebrenica; and serving in field missions in Cambodia, South Africa, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Afghanistan and Iraq. He also taught at Princeton University&#8217;s School of Public and International Affairs. He earned an MPhil in International Relations from the University of Cambridge, and a BS in Economics from New York University&#8217;s Stern School of Business.						Tags																					Policy Planning Staff																																							State Department Official
- Jameela Raja Akbari Jameela Raja Akbari serves as a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Global Talent Management (GTM) at the U.S. Department of State. In this role she supports the Offices of Performance Evaluation (PE), Policy, Planning and Coordination (PPC), and the Grievance Staff (G). She serves as the Department’s Deputy Chief Human Capital Officer. She has worked at the U.S. Department of State since 2014, first as a Senior Advisor for the Chief Information Officer before leading a new information technology workforce planning unit. From 2019 to 2023, she led OAA.Jameela began her federal career in 2001 as a Presidential Management Fellow at the Department of Health and Human Services. She has also worked at the Social Security Administration, the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, and did a detail to the Department of Education’s Office of the Deputy Secretary and the Bureau of South and Central Asia in the Department.Jameela holds a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Chicago and a master’s degree from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. A native of suburban Chicago, she and her spouse parent three children and she considers herself a motivated, yet mediocre runner.						Tags																					Bureau of Global Talent Management																																							State Department Official
- Afreen Akhter Afreen Akhter is a Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (SCA) for Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and the Maldives, as well as the Office of Security and Transnational Affairs. Ms. Akhter most recently served as a Senior Advisor to SCA Assistant Secretary Don Lu. Previously, Ms. Akhter was the National Security and Foreign Affairs Adviser to U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen. Other assignments include the State Department’s Office of Pakistan Affairs, Political-Military Affairs Bureau, U.S. Embassy Beijing and the National Security Council. She was a Presidential Management Fellow and a Fulbright Scholar to Kingston, Jamaica. Ms. Akhter hails from Oak Brook, IL. She earned her M.A. in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and her B.A. from Brown University.						Tags																					Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs																																							State Department Official
- Elizabeth M. Allen On April 4, 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken delegated the functions and authorities of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs to Elizabeth M. Allen. She was later nominated and sworn into the position on June 15, 2023 to become the 10th Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. Allen also served as the Assistant Secretary of Global Public Affairs from September 2021, to April 2022.Allen began her career at the U.S. Department of State in the Office of Global Women’s Issues and Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement. During the Obama-Biden Administration, she served at the State Department as Director of Strategic Communications and Public Affairs for Educational and Cultural Affairs.A longtime communications and public affairs strategist, Allen was previously a partner at the strategic advisory firm FGS Global, where she specialized in message and advocacy strategy, reputation and crisis management, and executive leadership communications on a range of international public policy issues.Prior to FGS, Allen spent seven years in the Obama-Biden White House, serving as Deputy Communications Director and Deputy Assistant to President Barack Obama, White House Director of Message Planning, and Deputy Director of Communications to then-Vice President Joe Biden.During her White House tenure, Allen drove communications planning around the President’s priorities, domestic and foreign policies, and legislative and outreach strategy. She managed complex message events, groundbreaking interviews and documentaries, and press coverage for President Obama and Vice President Biden across the United States and in more than 30 foreign countries on five continents. In 2020, Allen served as Vice President Kamala Harris’s communications director on the Biden-Harris Presidential campaign.&nbsp;Allen is a proud Buffalo, New York, native and graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in Political Science and minor in Sociology from the State University of New York (SUNY) College at Geneseo.						Tags																																				State Department Official																															Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs
- Rina Amiri Rina Amiri is currently the U.S. Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls, and Human Rights. Under the Obama Administration, she served as a senior advisor to the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.Ms. Amiri brings over two decades of political expertise, advising and working with governments in various conflict settings in West and the Horn of Africa, the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and Europe. Her areas of focus are peace and security, with a specialization in inclusion in mediation processes. Ms. Amiri has served in the United Nations in several capacities including as a Senior Mediation Expert and as a member of the United Nation’s Special Representative of the Secretary General’s political team in Afghanistan during the implementation of the Bonn Agreement. She has held senior and leadership positions in a variety of universities and think tanks, including the Women in Public Policy Program at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy’s School of Government; Princeton University’s Innovations for Successful Societies; and New York University’s Center for Global Affairs and The Center on International Cooperation where, as a Senior Fellow, she led the Afghanistan and Regional Policy Initiative. She has championed the rights of Afghan women and girls for decades and is a founding member of Inclusive Security, a global women’s initiative advocating for the inclusion of women in peace processes.For more on the Special Envoy&#8217;s work, please follow her on Twitter .						Tags																					Office of Global Women&#8217;s Issues																																							State Department Official
- Hady Amr Hady Amr currently serves as the Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs within the Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Prior to this position, Special Representative Amr served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs from January 2021 to November 2022, and previously served at the State Department from 2013-2017 on Secretary of State John Kerry’s team working on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. From 2010-2013, he served as Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Middle East at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) where he helped coordinate numerous assistance programs across the region during the Arab uprisings. He also previously held positions at the U.S. Department of Defense and the Department of Homeland Security. During his career, he worked for or advised various international organizations including the World Bank and the World Economic Forum. Immediately prior to January 2021, he was a scholar with both the Brookings Institution and the Center for a New American Security where he focused on U.S. foreign policy across the Middle East and on human development in the region. He earned a Master’s degree in economics and international affairs from Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs and a Bachelor’s degree in economics from Tufts University.						Tags																					Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs																																							State Department Official
- Roy  Awabdeh Roy Awabdeh serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Senate Affairs. He previously led the Department of State’s congressional investigations practice as Senior Advisor &amp; Senior Investigations Counsel. Before joining the Department, Mr. Awabdeh served as Senior Counsel on the Senate Homeland Security &amp; Governmental Affairs Committee, where he was responsible for legislation, oversight, and congressional investigations of national security matters, and as Counsel on the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mr. Awabdeh also served as Policy Advisor to Senator Elizabeth Warren, covering economics, ethics, and foreign affairs. Before joining the staff of the U.S. Senate, Mr. Awabdeh began his legal career as a clerk on the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals and then litigated complex civil and criminal matters in private practice. Mr. Awabdeh is a first-generation American who speaks fluent Arabic and holds a B.A. from Wheaton College and a J.D. from Columbia Law School.						Tags																					Bureau of Legislative Affairs																																							State Department Official
- Jennifer Bachus Jennifer Bachus is the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy. Previously she served as Chargé d&#8217;Affaires, a.i. and Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Prague, Czech Republic.  Prior to that, she served as Office Director for Central Europe at the U.S. Department of State; Special Assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment; Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Pristina, Kosovo; Political-Economic Counselor in Astana, Kazakhstan; and head of the American Presence Post in Toulouse, France. She also served in Vietnam and Jamaica, as well as on a fellowship at Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.She has an M.A. from the College of Europe in Bruges, Belgium, and a B.A. from Brown University.  She speaks Czech, French, and Russian, and might still manage to mangle a few words of Vietnamese.						Tags																					Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy																																							State Department Official
- Chris Backemeyer Chris Backemeyer currently serves as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Assistance Coordination and Regional and Multilateral Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, where he oversees cross-cutting regional policy issues and coordinates over $7 billion in foreign assistance for the Middle East and North Africa. He is a career member of the Senior Executive Service.Previously, Mr. Backemeyer served as Special Advisor in the Office of the Vice President, where he advised Vice President Harris on national security and foreign policy issues related to the Middle East, international economics, and climate change.From 2017 – 2021, he served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Press and Public Diplomacy and Assistance Coordination in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.From 2016-2017, Mr. Backemeyer served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Iranian Affairs and oversaw the Department’s diplomatic efforts toward Iran.From 2015-16, he served as the Deputy Coordinator for Sanctions Policy. In this role he represented the United States in the P5+1 negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, where he served as the lead sanctions negotiator.From 2012 to 2014, Mr. Backemeyer served as the Director for Iran on the National Security Council staff at the White House, where he was responsible for advising the President, National Security Advisor, and other White House officials on strategic priorities for Iran during a period of burgeoning diplomatic discussions over its nuclear program.Prior to his time at the White House, Mr. Backemeyer served as the Deputy Director of the Office of Sanctions Policy and Implementation at the State Department, where he was responsible for effectively implementing U.S. sanctions in a variety of areas.Prior to his service in government, Mr. Backemeyer worked in the banking sector where he focused on commercial financing of corporate and real estate transactions. Mr. Backemeyer is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). He also holds a Master’s degree in International Affairs from the School of International Relations and Pacific Studies at the University of California San Diego and Bachelor’s degrees in Finance and Political Science from Arizona State University.						Tags																					Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs																																Middle East																																														State Department Official
- Erin M. Barclay Erin M. Barclay is a career member of the Senior Executive Service and currently serves as the Acting Director in the Office of Civil Rights.  Prior to this position, Erin served concurrently as the Senior Official of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and as Coordinator for Global Democratic Renewal in the Office of the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Human Rights and Democracy.  Prior to these positions, Erin was the Executive Director of the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.  She previously ran INL’s Office of Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, as well as INL’s Office of Criminal Justice Assistance and Partnership.  Prior to coming back as INL’s Executive Director, Ms. Barclay served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs in the International Organization Affairs, and Acting Assistant Secretary and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Department of State’s Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations.  She is the recipient of the 2021 President Rank Award, the 2020 F. Allen “Tex” Harris Human Rights Diplomacy Award from the United Nations Association of the National Capitol Region, and numerous State Department performance awards.Ms. Barclay began her Department of State career in the European Bureau’s Office of Assistance Coordination to Europe and Eurasia.  In 2007 she moved to INL’s Office of Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East where she oversaw management of INL programs in over thirty countries.  She later served as the found director of INL’s Office of Criminal Justice Assistance and Partnership which provided strategic, technical expertise and direction to INL’s police, corrections, and rule-of-law programming and policies.  As the PDAS and Acting Assistant Secretary in CSO, Ms. Barclay led all aspects of the Bureau during a period of significant transition.  In the IO Bureau, Ms. Barclay served as the Department’s lead on human rights, refugee, migration and humanitarian relief policy and negotiations at the United Nations and with other international organizations.  In 2018, Ms. Barclay returned to INL as the Bureau’s Executive Director and Controller, where she was responsible for management and oversight of INL’s approximately $1.5 billion in annual foreign assistance appropriations across INL programs in approximately ninety countries around the world. Prior to joining the Department, Ms. Barclay was the Executive Director of the Network of East West Women, a non-profit organization that promotes women’s human rights in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. Ms. Barclay has been an adjunct professor of international women’s human rights at Georgetown University Law Center and George Mason University. She is a graduate of the State University of New York at Binghamton and the University at Buffalo School of Law, and is an attorney admitted in New York State and the District of Columbia.  She lives with her husband and their two adorable sons.