Press Release - President Biden Announces Key Nominees

WASHINGTON – Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate the following leaders to serve as key leaders in his administration:

• Mark W. Libby, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Azerbaijan
• Marie C. Damour, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Fiji, the Republic of Kiribati, the Republic of Nauru, the Kingdom of Tonga, and Tuvalu
• Angela Price Aggeler, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of North Macedonia
• Gautam A. Rana, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Slovak Republic
• Sue E. Moore, Nominee for Commissioner of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission
• Andrew J. Read, Nominee for Commissioner of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission

Mark W. Libby, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Azerbaijan

Mark W. Libby, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, currently serves as a State Department Faculty Advisor at the National War College in Washington, D.C. Previously, he served as Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d'Affaires ad interim at the U.S. Mission to the European Union in Brussels. Other overseas assignments include tours in Warsaw, Nassau, Nicosia, and Baghdad, where he served as Political Counselor. His Washington assignments include tours as a watch-stander and 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; and Director of Orientation at the Foreign Service Institute. Earlier, Libby worked on the State Department Secretariat Staff, returning later as Director. He has a Bachelor's Degree from Tufts University in Massachusetts and also studied at the Institut des Etudes Politiques ("Sciences-Po") in Paris; he earned a Master's Degree from the National War College, where he was a Distinguished Graduate. He is fluent in Polish and French.

Marie C. Damour, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of Fiji, the Republic of Kiribati, the Republic of Nauru, the Kingdom of Tonga, and Tuvalu

Marie C. Damour is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, with the rank of Minister-Counselor. She currently serves as Consul General of the U.S. Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Previously, Damour was the Director of the Office of Maritime Southeast Asian Affairs in the State Department's Bureau of East Asia and Pacific Affairs; Director of the Office of Policy Coordination and Public Affairs in the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs; and the Deputy Chief of Mission, as well as Chargé d'Affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy in Wellington, New Zealand. Among her other assignments, Damour was Minister Counselor for Consular Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil; the Chief of Non-Immigrant Visa Services and then Chief of Visa Services at the U.S. Embassy in London, England; the Consular Chief at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, and the U.S. Consulate General in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Damour earned her B.A. from the College of William and Mary. She speaks French, Vietnamese, and Portuguese.

Angela Price Aggeler, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Republic of North Macedonia

Angela Price Aggeler, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Previously, she served as Chargé d'Affaires ad interim. Aggeler formerly served as Minister Counselor for Public Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, France; Acting Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs and the Office of the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan in Washington, D.C.; and, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Press and Public Diplomacy in the Bureau of Press and Public Diplomacy. Earlier, she was Counselor for Public Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. Previous assignments include Public Affairs Officer at the American Embassy in Skopje, Macedonia; Cultural and Press Attaché of the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam; Spokesperson for the Bureau of Consular Affairs at the State Department; and assignments at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, France and U.S. Embassy in New Delhi, India. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Aggeler worked for the State Department at U.S. Embassies in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso and Budapest, Hungary, as well as the Consulate General in Madras, India. Earlier in her career, she worked at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. and as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Central African Republic. Aggeler is the recipient of numerous State Department awards, including the Assistant Secretary's Award for Excellence and the Mildred Sinclaire Award for Language. A graduate of the University of Utah, she speaks French, Macedonian, and some Hindi.

Gautam A. Rana, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Slovak Republic

Gautam Rana is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, with the rank of Counselor. He currently serves as Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Algeria and was the Chargé d'Affaires ad interim there from August 2020 to February 2022. Previously, he was the Deputy Chief of Mission and Chargé d'Affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy Ljubljana, Slovenia. Among other positions, Rana was Director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the National Security Council staff and the Deputy Minister Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. Rana also served as the Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State, Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, and worked in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the UAE. Rana earned B.A. and B.S. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, a J.D. from the Vanderbilt University School of Law and an M.A. from the National Defense University. He speaks Hindi, Spanish, and Gujarati.

Sue E. Moore, Nominee for Commissioner of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission

Dr. Sue E. Moore is a Research Scientist and Affiliate Professor at the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels in the Biology Department of the University of Washington. Moore currently serves as a Science Advisor to the U. S. Marine Mammal Commission, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Marine Mammal Unusual Mortality Event Working Group, and the Washington State Academy of Sciences. Moore previously worked for NOAA for 20 years, where she served as the Director of the NOAA National Marine Mammal Laboratory and as a Senior Scientist for the NOAA Fisheries Science & Technology Marine Division. Moore also served as Chair of the Environmental Concerns Working Group of the International Whaling Commission (IWC) Scientific Committee from 2008-2012.

Moore has over 40 years of research experience focused on the ecology, bioacoustics, and natural history of whales and dolphins, with most of her work directed toward cetaceans in the Pacific Arctic region. She holds a B.A. in Biology from the University of California, San Diego, an M.S. in Biology from San Diego State University, and a Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography.

Andrew J. Read, Nominee for Commissioner of the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission

Dr. Andrew J. Read is the Stephen A. Toth Distinguished Professor of Marine Biology at the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University, and currently serves as the Director of the Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beaufort, North Carolina. He was born in Southampton, England and educated in Canada. Read received his Ph.D. from the University of Guelph in 1990 for research on the biology and conservation of harbour porpoises. Read conducted post-doctoral research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution from 1990 to 1995 and then moved to the Duke University Marine Laboratory, where he remains today. He has conducted field research on marine mammals in North and South America, Europe, and the Antarctic, with a focus on conservation biology.

Read is active in the conservation of marine mammals at the national and international levels. He is a member of the Cetacean Specialist Group of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita, and several federal marine mammal Take Reduction Teams. Read served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling Commission and is a past President of the Society for Marine Mammalogy. He has written more than 200 scientific papers and supervised 25 Ph.D. graduates at Duke University. Read lives in Gloucester, North Carolina with his wife.