A Senior Foreign Service Officer, R. Niels Marquardt was sworn in as Ambassador to Madagascar and the Union of the Comoros on August 17, 2007. Marquardt graduated from Lewis and Clark College in 1975, and was a Peace Corps volunteer in Rwanda from 1977-79, before attending the American Graduate School of International Management and the National War College (graduating 1980 and 1994, respectively).

 

In the U.S., Marquardt has served in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs and as a Country Risk Analyst at the Export-Import Bank. He has served overseas in Thailand (1981-83 and 1987-90), in the Congo (1983-85), in France (1990-1994) and in Germany (1995-1998).

 

From 1998-2000 he was Director of the State Department’s Entry-level Counseling and Assignments Division in the Bureau of Human Resources.

 

From 2001-2004, Marquardt was Special Coordinator for Diplomatic Readiness, and from 2004-2006 he was Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea. Before assuming his current post as the U.S. Ambassador to Madagascar and the Comoros , he was Ambassador to Cameroon.

 

Marquardt speaks French, German, Thai and Spanish.