Afghanistan
Ross Wilson is an American diplomat who served five times as a US chief of mission abroad – as ambassador to Azerbaijan (2000-03) and to Turkey (2005-08) and as chargé d’affaires in Turkey (2014), Georgia (2018-19), and Afghanistan (from January 2020 until the embassy’s suspension of operations on August 30, 2021). A career Foreign Service officer, Ambassador Wilson also had postings at the US embassies in Moscow (twice) and Prague and as consul general in Melbourne, Australia. Among Washington assignments, he was deputy executive secretary of the State Department; principal deputy to the ambassador-at-large and special advisor to the Secretary of State for the new independent states of the former Soviet Union; chief US negotiator for the Free Trade Area of the Americas, and chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick.
From 2010 to 2014, Ambassador Wilson was director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, where he led Council work on Turkey, the former Soviet states, and regional energy and economic issues. He has held positions as a visiting lecturer in international affairs at George Washington University, Bigelow teacher-in-residence at Carleton College, chair of the Board of Directors of Global Minnesota (a World Affairs Council affiliate based in Minneapolis), chair of the Board of Governors of the Institute of Turkish Studies, and on advisory councils for the Eurasia Foundation and American Voices.
The recipient of a bachelor’s degree from the University of Minnesota and master’s degrees from Columbia University and the US National War College, Ambassador Wilson has been awarded the president’s Meritorious Service Award and numerous State Department awards and honors. He holds memberships in the American Academy of Diplomacy, the American Foreign Service Association, and the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs. A descendant of Choctaw Indians, he is an enrolled member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma. He is married to Margo Squire, also an American Foreign Service officer, and lives in western Wisconsin.