The Pacific island nation of Micronesia will soon have its eighth U.S. ambassador, a career Foreign Service Officer who will be serving her first ambassadorship. Dorothea-Maria (Doria) Rosen was nominated by President Obama on March 9, 2012, subject to Senate confirmation. This country of tiny, scattered islands in the Western Pacific used to be a territory of the U.S., which has had an embassy there since September 20, 1989.

 

Born in New York City on September 7, 1950, Rosen attended local public schools. She earned an A.B. in Psychology at Vassar College in 1972 and a J.D. at Hofstra University Law School in 1975. She was admitted to the New York State Bar in 1976 and to the California State Bar in 1977. From 1976 to 1979 she served as an Army Captain on active duty in the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps in Heidelberg, Germany, and as an Army Reservist from 1979 to 1981. 

 

Rosen joined the Foreign Service in 1981. Her first two postings were to serve as vice consul at the U.S. embassy in Bucharest, Romania, from 1981 to 1983, and at the consulate in Stuttgart, Germany, from 1983 to 1986. Back in Washington, DC, Rosen served as an analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research from 1986 to 1988. In 1988, she began a string of foreign assignments, serving as deputy chief of the Immigrant Visa Section in Seoul, South Korea, from 1988 to 1989, and as consular officer in Accra, Ghana, from 1989 to 1991. Returning to Germany, Rosen served as political military officer at the embassy in Berlin from 1991 to 1994. She then served as Nonimmigrant Visa chief in Manila, Philippines, from 1994 to 1996, and as Visa Branch chief in Frankfurt, Germany, from 1996 to 1999.

 

Assigned to a stateside job for the first time in more than a decade, Rosen served as director of the Office of Public and Diplomatic Liaison in the Bureau of Consular Affairs from 1999 to 2001. She then served three straight postings in Europe: deputy chief of mission in Reykjavik, Iceland, from 2001 to 2004; consul general in Bern, Switzerland, from 2004 to 2008; and deputy principal officer in Frankfurt, Germany, from 2008 to 2011. She then served as the Diplomat-in-Residence for the Midwest region, based out of the University of Illinois at Chicago, from September 2011 to early 2012.

 

Rosen has studied French, Romanian and German. She has three adult children: Michael, Thomas and Katharine.

-Matt Bewig