Deputy Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs
Steven Pifer, a career senior Foreign Service Officer (class of Minister-Counselor), is a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs. He served from January 1998 to October 2000 as the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.
Ambassador Pifer, of Sebastopol, California, entered the Foreign Service in January 1978. In addition to his assignment to Ukraine, he has served at the American Embassies in Warsaw, Moscow and London. His Washington assignments have included the Office of European Political and Security Affairs, the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Office of Soviet Union Affairs, and the Office of the Coordinator for the New Independent States. From December 1994 until August 1997, he was detailed to the National Security Council, where he spent the last year as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia. From October 2000 to June 2001, he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.
Ambassador Pifer is a 1976 graduate of Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics. He holds several Superior and Meritorious Honor awards from the State Department. He and his wife have a daughter.
Released by the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs, July 2002.
