Biography

state.gov

Elizabeth Fitzsimmons

Deputy Executive Secretary

OFFICE OF THE EXECUTIVE SECRETARIAT

Term of Appointment: 05/2016 to present

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Elizabeth Fitzsimmons is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Counselor. She is currently Deputy Executive Secretary, a position she has held since May 2016. Elizabeth previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs and the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. She joined the Department in 1995, and at the time of her swearing in was the youngest member of the Foreign Service. She has served overseas in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Cambodia, India, and Bulgaria. Domestically, she has worked in the State Department Operations Center as a Senior Watch Officer, and as Deputy Director of the State Department’s Executive Secretariat.

Elizabeth holds a BA from the University of Virginia in East Asian studies and a certificate from the International Division at Waseda University in Tokyo. She speaks French, Mandarin Chinese, and Bulgarian. In 2009, she was named a Fellow by the International Women’s Forum, one of only 25 women in the world to be so honored.