Ambassador Barbara K. Bodine is a distinguished professor in the practice of diplomacy and the director of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University.

Her 33-year Foreign Service career was spent primarily on the broader Arab Gulf region with a dual focus on security/counterterrorism and governance/development. Her first assignment in the Department of State’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs was country officer for Yemen. She returned to that office as deputy director 10 years later, and served as US ambassador to Yemen from 1997 through much of 2001. She visited Yemen regularly until 2014. Other overseas assignments include Kuwait and Iraq (twice). In 1991 she received the Secretary of State’s Award for valor for her work in occupied Kuwait.

Ambassador Bodine also served as coordinator for counterterrorism operations and acting overall coordinator for counterterrorism, director of East African affairs and dean of the School of Professional Studies at the Foreign Service Institute. Since leaving the Foreign Service, she has held a number of fellowship and academic positions at the Kennedy School of Government, MIT, and, for seven years was a lecturer in public and international affairs and director of the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative at the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. She regularly teaches courses, lectures and provides public commentary on Yemen and events in the region.

She is a former member of the board of directors of the American Academy of Diplomacy, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a regent emerita of the University of California. She is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.