Francisco L. Palmieri
United States | Chargé d’Affaires, US Embassy in Colombia
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Francisco (Paco) L. Palmieri, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, serves as chargé d’affaires, ad interim, at the United States Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, as of June 1, 2022. Secretary of State Antony Blinken selected charge d’affaires Palmieri to lead US engagement with Colombia, to continue US support implementation of Colombia’s Peace Accord, and commemorate 200 years of bilateral relations.
Palmieri is a 36-year veteran of the Foreign Service. Over his career he has held leadership positions across the Department and has extensive expertise in US Western Hemisphere relations. Palmieri previously served as acting assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs from January 2017 to November 2018. He managed the successful US participation in the 2018 Summit of the Americas in Peru, US engagement with the Lima Group unifying 15 Western Hemisphere democracies in a multilateral diplomatic response to the crisis in Venezuela, and the reorientation of US foreign assistance in support of the Colombia peace process. In Colombia, he participated in the High-Level Strategic Dialogue in 2018 and directed Plan Colombia assistance as the director of the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (INL) Bureau’s Western Hemisphere Office. He most recently served as the civilian deputy to the commander and foreign policy advisor at United States Southern Command after serving as a senior fellow and faculty member at the Jackson Institute for Global Affairs at Yale University.
Palmieri also served as principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, deputy assistant secretary for Central America and the Caribbean, and director of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs’ Office of Policy Planning and Coordination. He was the director of Embassy Baghdad’s INL Office and served as director of the Near East and South and Central Asia Office in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL). Overseas, Palmieri served as political counselor at the US Embassy in Tegucigalpa, Honduras (2001-05). He also served in San Salvador as the human rights officer (1988-1990), in Santo Domingo as a vice consul, and in Madrid as a political-military affairs officer. He has served Secretaries Baker, Albright, Powell, Clinton, and Kerry in key team positions as a member of the Executive Secretariat.
Palmieri earned an MS in International Strategic Studies from the National War College in June 2006. He received his BA in Politics from Princeton University in 1983 and attended the University of Texas’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs from 1985-1986, where he studied under the Honorable Barbara Jordan.
Palmieri was an event speaker at the Dialogue.
