Obama Appoints New College Alum, Nancy McEldowney, to State Department Post

President Barack Obama has asked New College alumna and United States Ambassador to Bulgaria, Nancy McEldowney, to return to Washington to assume a new position with the State Department in early fall. McEldowney is Obama’s choice to become principal deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs.

McEldowney graduated from New College in 1981 with a degree in economics and later earned graduate degrees from Columbia University and the National Defense University.

The Obama Administration is working to identify a successor to Ambassador McEldowney in Bulgaria and has announced that there will be a Charge d’Affaires at the Embassy until the next ambassador is in place. McEldowney will remain in Bulgaria until late summer.

McEldowney, who has an extensive diplomatic career with the US State Department, was appointed as Ambassador to Bulgaria in January 2008 by President George W. Bush and assumed her post in Sofia in July 2008. Previously, she held positions as deputy chief of the US Mission in Ankara, Turkey and as deputy chief of the US Mission in Baku, Azerbaijan. In her most recent Washington assignment, McEldowney served at the White House as director of European affairs on the National Security Council.

She has also served overseas at the U.S. Embassies in Cairo, Egypt and Bonn, Germany. In addition, she was a member of the U.S. Delegation to the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the Soviet Union in Geneva, Switzerland.

Within the Department of State, Ambassador McEldowney has worked in the Office of Soviet Affairs, the Office of European Security Affairs, the Front Office of the European Bureau and the Office of the Deputy Secretary. She has also served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense at the Pentagon.

For more information on Ambassador McEldowney or on New College of Florida, please contact Aimee Chouinard, media relations coordinator, at (941) 487-4152 or [email protected].