Jeffrey Davidow

A member of the State Department's Foreign Service since 1969, he has served in numerous overseas assignments and in Washington. He has held four presidential appointments, as Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere (1996-98) and as Ambassador to Zambia (1988-90), to Venezuela (1993-96), and Mexico (1998-2002). As Ambassador to Mexico, he was responsible for managing relations with a country of vital interest to the United States and with which the U.S. shares numerous unresolved problems - migration, narcotics, trade disputes, etc. The American embassy in Mexico employs almost 2,000 people and is considered one of the most complex management positions in the State Department. His four years in Mexico coincided with a period of unprecedented change and challenge in that nation, including the election of Vicente Fox as the first candidate from an opposition political party to win the presidency in over seventy years. Ambassador Davidow is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts (BA, 1965), the University of Minnesota (MA, 1967), and attended Osmania University in Hyderabad, India. He is one of four officers in the Department of State to hold the personal title of Career Ambassador, the Foreign Service's highest rank.