Scott Turner is currently a Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Population, Migration, and Refugees and has responsibility for humanitarian assistance programs in Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa and press and congressional affairs. From 2019-2022 he served as Deputy Political Counselor at the United States Mission to the United Nations in New York (USUN). He oversaw issues pertaining to Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, and the Western Hemisphere in the UN Security Council. Prior to that assignment, he was Deputy Counselor for Humanitarian Affairs at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in Geneva where he represented the United States at the International Syria Support Group’s Humanitarian Task Force from 2016-2019.
DAS Turner has also served overseas in several posts including Baghdad, where he was a refugee coordinator, and as the Political Counselor/Acting Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Mission to UNESCO. Domestically he served in the Secretary of State’s Operations Center and had a previous tour at USUN covering African peacekeeping and political issues. He joined the Department of State’s Foreign Service in 2001.
Prior to joining the State Department, he was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Guinea, West Africa promoting public health education, including for Liberian refugees, and women’s small enterprises.