Dr. Marie Richards, U.S. Department of State
Marie Richards joined the War College faculty in 2017. From 2014 to 2017 she was Deputy Counterterrorism Coordinator for Regional and Multilateral Affairs at the Department of State, a role that included policy making and partner engagement, bilaterally and in multilateral institutions such as the Global Counterterrorism Forum. Before that assignment she served as Principal Deputy Director in the Office of European Political and Security Affairs. From 2011 to 2012 she was Consul General in Peshawar, Pakistan, preceded by a year as the Pakistan-Afghanistan Border Coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad. Dr. Richards served two years, 2007 to 2009, on the National Security Council staff as Director for Afghanistan, preceded by two years as Deputy Political-Military Counselor in Kabul, Afghanistan. She has also held the position of Asia Section Chief in the Office of Regional Security and Arms Transfers Policy, Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. Other overseas assignments include Guangzhou, New Delhi, and Karachi.
A career member of the Senior Foreign Service holding the rank of Minister-Counselor, Dr. Richards earned an A.B. from Harvard University, a Masters in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, and a Ph.D. in history from the University of California at Berkeley. Right before entering the Foreign Service, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Wolfson College, Oxford University. Dr. Richards speaks Mandarin Chinese along with several European and South Asian languages, and she received the 2011 State Department Linguist of the Year award. She is also a Distinguished Graduate of the National War College class of 2010.
FUNCTIONAL EXPERTISE: Counterterrorism, NATO, Political-Military Affairs
REGIONAL EXPERTISE: South Asia (Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh); China