I was an American diplomat with official postings in Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Kenya.  My work in the Department of State also included assignments to the India, Kenya, and Uganda desks, and as I noted earlier, I was a student at Delhi University in India before the Foreign Service.  I have spend my adult life working on foreign affairs, and since my retirement from the Department of State, I have continued working there as the editor in chief of the Department's Annual Reports on Human Rights.   I have a master's degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins University, studied for a year at Delhi University in India, and have a bachelor's degree in history from the University of Northern Iowa.  I grew up in Iowa, and I had a strong desire from my youth to travel the world.  

Although I am retired from the Foreign Service, I am still fully employed in foreign affairs at State as editor in chief of the Department's annual human rights reports, the largest publication of the Department.  I do volunteer work with the General George C. Marshall International Center, and I am a past chairman of the editorial board of the Foreign Service Journal. 

In my spare time in the past two years, I have begun writing fiction.  Danger and Romance in Foreign Lands is my debut novel, but I also have two collections of short stories published by Amazon, and there is an oral history of my professional experiences one can read by searching the Library of Congress website.  I hope to expand my writing of fiction in the years to come.  Such writing may include a sequel to my first novel.