McGann attended university at Claremont McKenna College in Southern California, earning a Bachelor of Arts in 1973. He then pursued graduate studies in comparative government at Cornell University (1975-1978).

 

After joining the Foreign Service, his first overseas posts were in Taiwan, Zaire, South Africa, Australia and Kenya.

 

In 1998 McGann was sent to the U.S. Mission at the United Nations, where he developed and implemented Security Council strategies for Afghanistan, Cyprus, Nagorno-Karabakh and Chechnya, as well as peacekeeping operations in Georgia and Tajikistan.

 

In 2000, McGann was appointed South Asia Bureau Deputy Director for Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh.

 

Three years later he earned a Masters of Science degree from the Industrial College of the Armed Forces at the National Defense University.

 

In 2003, he was made director for Asia and Near East in the Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration, and was responsible for oversight of $370 million in humanitarian assistance dispensed to various UN and other international humanitarian organizations. His efforts centered on working with governments, international organizations and financial institutions to “build home country capacity and reintegrate vulnerable populations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Bhutan, North Korea and throughout Asia,” according to his State Department biography.

 

In 2007, McGann participated in the Fourth Joint Force Maritime Commander Component Course at the Naval War College.

 

Before his appointment as ambassador to Fiji, McGann was a senior adviser in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, serving as the maritime security coordinator and expert on North Korean human rights and refugee issues. He then served as the bureau’s director of the Office for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Island Affairs.

 

McGann and his wife, Bertra, have four sons and a daughter.

-Noel Brinkerhoff