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: Republic of Azerbaijan
CANDIDATE: Mark W. Libby
Mark W. Libby, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, currently serves as a State Department Faculty Advisor at the National War College in Washington, D.C. Previously, he served as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires a.i. at the U.S. Mission to the European Union in Brussels. Other overseas assignments include tours in Warsaw, Nassau, Nicosia, and Baghdad, where he served as Political Counselor. His Washington assignments include tours as a watch-stander and later Deputy Director for Crisis Management in the State Department Operations Center; Deputy Director in the Office of Central European Affairs; Director of the Office of Southern European Affairs; and Director of Orientation at the Foreign Service Institute. Earlier, Libby worked on the State Department Secretariat Staff, returning later as Director.
Libby’s nearly thirty years of diplomatic experience, combined with his extensive background as a manager and in crisis response, and his demonstrated ability to lead large interagency teams as well as policy-oriented offices, make him a well-qualified candidate to be the U.S. Ambassador to Azerbaijan.
Libby has a Bachelor’s degree from Tufts University in Massachusetts and also studied at the Institut des Etudes Politiques (“Sciences-Po”) in Paris; he earned a Master’s degree from the National War College, where he was a Distinguished Graduate. A native of Massachusetts, Libby is the recipient of numerous State Department performance awards, including three Senior Foreign Service Performance Awards. He is fluent in Polish and French.