REPORT FOR THE COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN RELATIONS
UNITED STATES SENATE
SUBJECT: Ambassadorial Nomination: Certificate of Demonstrated Competence — Foreign Service Act, Section 304(a)(4)
POST: Kingdom of Cambodia
CANDIDATE: Robert William Forden
Robert Forden is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor. He currently is a Senior Advisor in the East Asian and Pacific Affairs Bureau of the U.S. Department of State. Prior to that he served as the Deputy Chief of Mission, and also as Chargé d’affaires a.i. of the U.S. Embassy in the People’s Republic of China. Prior to that, Mr. Forden was the Deputy Director of the American Institute in Taiwan and before that the Economic Counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv, Israel. He was also Deputy Economic Counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and, in Washington, was the Deputy Director of the Office of Chinese and Mongolian Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Mr. Forden’s demonstrated success as a leader, coupled with almost three decades of work in and on Asia as a career diplomat, make him a well-qualified candidate to serve as U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom of Cambodia.
Among his other assignments, Mr. Forden was Chief of the Kaohsiung Branch of the American Institute in Taiwan, an Economic Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam, and an Economic Officer in the Special Trade Activities Division of the Multilateral Trade Affairs Office in the U.S. Department of State, Washington, D.C.
Mr. Forden earned his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He is the recipient of numerous State Department performance awards and he speaks Chinese (Mandarin) and Vietnamese.