US Senate confirms new ambassador to Azerbaijan

Mark Libby has been appointed as the new US Ambassador to Azerbaijan.

"The Senate confirmed by voice vote the nomination of Mark W. Libby to be Ambassador to the Republic of Azerbaijan," reports the Senate Press Gallery.

Mark Libby was a Department of State Faculty Advisor at the National War College.  Prior to returning to Washington, he served as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d’affaires at the US Mission to the European Union in Brussels from July 2018 until June 2021. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, his other overseas assignments have included tours in Warsaw, Nassau, Nicosia, and Baghdad, where he served as a political counsellor.  

His Washington assignments have included tours as a watch-stander later deputy director for crisis management in the State Department Operations Center; deputy director in the Office of Central European Affairs; director of the Office of Southern European Affairs (Türkiye, Greece, Cyprus); and director of orientation at the Foreign Service Institute. He was also a line officer on the State Department Secretariat Staff under Secretary Powell, returning later as director of that same office under Secretary Clinton. Libby did his undergraduate studies at Tufts University in Massachusetts and at the Institut des Etudes Politiques (“Sciences-Po”) in Paris; he earned a master’s degree from the National War College.

He is fluent in Polish and French and has limited skills in Russian, Turkish, and German.  Originally from New England, Libby is married and has one son.

Libby will fill Earl Litzenberger's shoes as an ambassador. Litzenberger's term expired in July 2022.