A career member of the Senior Foreign Service who has served before in Nepal and in neighboring India has been nominated by President Obama to be the next ambassador to Nepal. Peter W. Bodde was nominated on March 2, 2012, and is expected to be confirmed by the Senate.
The son of William and Ingrid Bodde, Peter Bodde was born in October 1954. His father was a Foreign Service officer who served as U.S. ambassador to Fiji, Tuvalu and Tonga (1980-1981) and ambassador to the Marshall Islands (1990-1992). His brother Christopher was also a Foreign Service officer.
Bodde earned his B.A. at the University of Maryland in 1976, and then worked as a commodity industry analyst with the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Bodde joined the Foreign Service in 1981, and served early career assignments at the embassy in Kathmandu, Nepal, from 1982 to 1984; as minister counselor for Administrative Affairs at the embassy in New Delhi, India; in Copenhagen, Denmark; Sofia, Bulgaria; at the consulate in Hamburg, Germany; as deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Kathmandu, from 1994 to 1997; and in Georgetown, Guyana. He has also served in various State Department positions in Washington, most recently as the director of the management policy in the Office of Management Policy, Rightsizing and Innovation.
From 2002 to 2006, he was consul general at the U.S. Consulate in Frankfurt, Germany. From February 2006 to August 2008, he was deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Bodde served as ambassador to Malawi from September 2008 to July 2011. He has served as assistant chief of mission for assistance transition in Iraq and coordinator for minority issues at the embassy in Baghdad, since August 2011.
Bodde is married to Tanya Lee Will Bodde, who has also served in the Foreign Service.They have one daughter and one son. Peter Bodde speaks German, Bulgarian and Nepali.
-Matt Bewig
