Biden Nominates Senior Foreign Service Counselor Gautam Rana as Ambassador to the Slovak Republic

President Biden has nominated Indian American Gautam Rana as Ambassador to the Slovak Republic. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, with the rank of counselor, Rana currently serves as Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Algeria. Before that, he was the Chargé d’Affaires ad interim there from August 2020 to February 2022. He also served as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

Among other positions, he was director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the National Security Council staff and the Deputy Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. He also served as the Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and has worked in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the UAE. 

Before joining the deputy secretary’s staff, he was the Special Assistant to Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Daniel Fried. He also served as the Political Advisor to the 4th Brigade Combat Team of the 101st Airborne Division in Khost, Afghanistan from February-July 2008, and as the Political Advisor on the Coalition Provisional Authority Governance Team in Mosul, Iraq from 2003-2004.  

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Before joining the Foreign Service in 2002, Rana was a staff attorney with the Legal Aid Society in New York City and a civil rights fellow with the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium. Rana has varying levels of proficiency in Hindi, Gujarati, Spanish, and Arabic. He has degrees in Economics and International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania, a law degree from Vanderbilt University, and a Master of Arts in Strategic Security Studies from the National Defense University. He is married, with two children.