Alina Romanowski

Romanowski is from Illinois. Both her parents immigrated to the U.S., her father from Poland and her mother from Canada.[2] She earned a master's degree in international relations as well as a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago. She also attended Tel Aviv University in Israel. She speaks French, Arabic and Hebrew.[3]

While she was a student at the University of Chicago, Romanowski interviewed on campus with the CIA, and began a career in the U.S. government.[4] Romanowski has spent forty years in U.S. public service roles, focused in large part in Near East and South Asia. She worked for the Central Intelligence Agency as an intelligence analyst on the Near East and South Asia region for ten years. She served as the Director of the NESA Office and country director for Israel. Romanowski served as founding Director of the Near East-South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University, as well as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In 2003 she joined the State Department to establish the Middle East Partnership Initiative Office and serve as its first Director. She also served in two Deputy Assistant Secretary positions in the Bureau of Education and Cultural Affairsand as acting Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.

From 2011 to 2015 at Romanowski served at USAID as Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Middle East Bureau. In March 2015 she became the Coordinator for U.S. Assistance to Europe and Eurasia in the State Department's Bureau for European and Eurasian Affairs, overseeing all U.S. federal assistance to thirty countries in Europe and Eurasia, including Central Asia.

Romanowski became Principal Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism in 2017, after serving in an acting role.[5]

Romanowski was confirmed as Ambassador to Kuwait by a voice vote of the Senate on December 19, 2019,[6] and presented her credentials to Kuwaiti Emir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah at Bayan Palace in Kuwait City on February 11, 2020.[7]

• List of ambassadors of the United States