Ambassador

Deputy Chief of Mission Kevin Sullivan

Kevin Sullivan is a career member of the U.S. Foreign Service.  He joined the State Department in 1987.  His most recent prior assignment was as Political/Economic Counselor in Ethiopia.  He arrived in Malawi in August 2007. 

Mr. Sullivan began his career as a vice-consul in the Dominican Republic (1988-1990), and then discovered Africa for the first time as General Services Officer in the Gambia (1990-92).  He returned to Washington to serve as the Western Hemisphere Bureau’s expert on human rights and the environment (1992-94), during which time he participated in two sessions of the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva and helped develop the first Summit of the Americas in 1994.   Mr. Sullivan later moved on to the Department’s Office of Cuban Affairs (1994-97), where he managed U.S. sanctions on Cuba and developed a number of initiatives designed to increase contact between U.S. civil society and the Cuban people.  He also served as aide to the President’s Special Representative on Cuba, assisting the Representative in negotiations with the European Union on a joint approach to promoting democracy in Cuba.

Returning overseas, Mr. Sullivan served as trade officer at the U.S. Embassy in Argentina (1997-2000), where he helped negotiate an Open Skies aviation agreement.  He then moved on to be Senior Economic Officer in Chile (2001-2005), participating on the team that concluded the ground-breaking U.S.-Chile Free Trade Agreement.  He also supported President Bush’s participation in the Asia Pacific Economic forum (APEC) in Santiago, as well as several other presidential visits to Latin America and Europe.  Mr. Sullivan returned to Africa as Political Economic Counselor in Ethiopia (2005-2007), where he helped chart the U.S. Government’s course during a tumultuous period of civil unrest and Ethiopia’s military intervention in Somalia.

Mr. Sullivan was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio.  He received a B.A. in History at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. and a Masters Degree in Public Policy from Princeton University.  He has received the State Department’s Superior Honor Award three times.  He and his wife Guadalupe have one daughter, Sophia.