Ambassador Nancy McEldowney was a career foreign service officer for more than 30 years and currently serves as Vice President Kamala Harris’ National Security Advisor. As Harris is considered to be relatively inexperienced in foreign affairs when compared with her other expertise, many believe that Amb. McEldowney will provide her with this experience. It can be expected that she will thus have a very close working relationship with the Vice President because of this.

Amb. McEldowney’s foreign affairs experience has led her to work with numerous sitting Presidents, such as when she accompanied President Reagan to Iceland and Moscow in 1986 and 1988 for meetings with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev. Her regional expertise focuses on Europe and Eurasia, as evidenced by her service as the US Deputy Chief of Mission in Azerbaijan from 2001-2004 and in Turkey from 2005-2008. This experience culminated in being named U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria in 2008 until she was called back to Washington by Hillary Clinton in 2009 to serve as principal deputy assistant secretary for European and Eurasian affairs. Following this appointment, she would then go on to serve as Director of the Foreign Service Institute from 2013-2017. She exited this role largely due to disagreements with then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s management of the State Department.