On July 8, 2015, President Barack Obama nominated Catherine Ebert-Gray, a career member of the Foreign Service, to be the next ambassador to Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. If she’s confirmed, it will be her first ambassadorial posting and her second in Papua New Guinea.

Ebert-Gray has a BA from the University of Wisconsin in 1977 and eight years later earned an MS from the Eisenhower School at National Defense University.

She began her Foreign Service career serving as a general services officer in Australia, Egypt, and Papua New Guinea. In 1995, she was named a management counselor at the embassy in Lome, Togo. Ebert-Gray was sent to Germany in 1998 as a management/contracting officer working in the consulate in Frankfurt and the embassy, which at the time was in Bonn.

Ebert-Gray was sent to Bamako, Mali, in 1999 as a management counselor. She came home in 2001 to work as a program analysis officer in the Bureau of Administration. The following year, she was made a supervisory post management officer in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

She was sent overseas again in 2005, this time to the embassy in Rabat, Morocco, as a management counselor. The following year, she took a similar post at the embassy in Manila, Philippines.

Ebert-Gray was brought home in 2009 to serve as Director of the Office of Overseas Employment. There, she coordinated such things as the hiring of local staff, setting pay scales within the prevailing pay structure for that location. Since 2011, she has been a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Administration. Ebert-Gray has been working in logistics management, particularly the handover of facilities in Iraq from the Department of Defense to the State Department.

She is married to Ian Gray. She speaks French.

-Steve Straehley

To Learn More:

Official Announcement

Certificate of Demonstrated Competence (Committee on Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate)