U.S. Ambassador-designate to Romania arrives in Bucharest

U.S. ambassador-designate to Romania Kathleen Kavalec arrived in Bucharest on Thursday, according to a social media post by the US Embassy in Bucharest.

In the upcoming days, ambassador Kavalec will present her credential letters to Romanian President Klaus Iohannis and will meet Prime Minister Nicolae Ciuca and Foreign Minister Bogdan Aurescu.

Kathleen Ann Kavalec, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of minister-counselor, served as the head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina since 2019.

Previously, she served as deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. Kavalec also served as the director of the Office of Russian Affairs and the deputy chief of mission of the US mission UNESCO in Paris, France.

She was responsible for overseeing major US foreign assistance programmes as deputy coordinator for assistance in the European Bureau, and as director for conflict prevention in the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization.

She has served in Bucharest, Romania, Kyiv, Ukraine, and Moscow, Russia.

A native of California, Kavalec earned a Bachelor of Arts in political science from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master of Science in foreign service from Georgetown University. She speaks Romanian, Spanish, Portuguese, French and Russian.