Press Release - President Biden Announces Key Nominees

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

• Dean Thompson, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Nepal
• Travis LeBlanc, Nominee for Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

Dean Thompson, Nominee for Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Nepal

Dean R. Thompson is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, class of Minister-Counselor. He currently serves as the State Department's Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for South and Central Asian Affairs, and was the acting Assistant Secretary from 2020-2021. Prior to that, Thompson was the Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and the Deputy Chief of Mission and Charge d'affaires, a.i. of the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest, Romania. Thompson also was the Consul General of the U.S. Consulate in Kolkata, India. Among other assignments, he served as Director of the State Department's Executive Secretariat Staff, Deputy Director of the State Department Operations Center, Director of the Operations Center Crisis Management Staff, and Deputy Director for Information Resources Management for the Executive Secretariat.

Thompson earned a B.A. degree from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio, a M.A. degree from the University of Maryland School of Public Affairs, and a M.S. in National Security Strategy from the National War College, National Defense University. His foreign languages include Romanian and Bengali.

Travis LeBlanc, Nominee for Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board

Travis LeBlanc has served as a Member of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board since 2019. He is also a Partner at Cooley LLP in Washington, DC and San Francisco, where he is a co-leader of the global litigation department and the Vice Chair of the cyber, data, and privacy practice. Before his confirmation to the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, LeBlanc was appointed by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the European Commission to serve as an arbitrator under the EU-US Privacy Shield Framework.

During the Obama-Biden Administration, LeBlanc was the Federal Communications Commission's Enforcement Bureau Chief. He previously served as a Senior Adviser to former California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris, and as Special Assistant Attorney General of California. Prior to his California roles, LeBlanc served during the Obama-Biden Administration as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel, worked in private practice, and clerked for the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit. LeBlanc is a member of the American Law Institute and serves on the Board of the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT), and on the Advisory Board of the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC). A native of New Orleans, Louisiana, LeBlanc holds an A.B. with honors from Princeton University, a M.P.A. from Harvard University, a J.D. from Yale Law School, and a LL.M. from the University of Cambridge.