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: African Union
CANDIDATE: Stephanie Sanders Sullivan
Stephanie Sanders Sullivan, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Career Minister, most recently served as Ambassador to the Republic of Ghana, from 2018 – 2022. Previously, she was a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, where she was also Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary. She served earlier as Ambassador to the Republic of Congo, and before that, as Chief of Staff for the Deputy Secretary of State. In her distinguished career of over thirty years, she has more than two decades of experience working on African issues in Washington and in the field. This, coupled with her demonstrated success as a leader and an effective manager, makes her a well-qualified candidate to serve as Representative to the African Union with the Rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary.
Earlier, Ms. Sullivan served as Managing Director of the Office of Management Policy, Rightsizing, and Innovation; as a Supervisory Management Officer in the Joint Executive Office for the European and International Organizations Affairs Bureaus; Post Management Officer in the Bureau of African Affairs; and Area Management Officer in the Office of Foreign Buildings Operations. She served in the State Department Operations Center variously as Director, Deputy Director, Senior Watch Officer, and Watch Officer and as Duty Officer at the White House Situation Room. She held assignments as Political Chief in Accra and as a Desk Officer in the Bureau of African Affairs. In addition, she served in Yaounde and Douala, Cameroon. Before the Foreign Service, she was a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (then Zaire) for three years. She later served as Chief of Operations for the Peace Corps’ Africa Region in Washington, D.C. (1994-96).
Ms. Sullivan earned a bachelor’s degree at Brown University and a master’s degree at the National Defense University. She received a Presidential Rank Award (Meritorious) and many State Department performance awards, as well as a Sustained Superior Performance Award from the Peace Corps and a decoration from the Government of Ghana. Ambassador Sullivan speaks French, Lingala, and basic Spanish.