Honorary Member

☎ CONTACT

703-347-2317
nielsm@lclark.edu

Retired US Ambassador Niels Marquardt has served as Diplomat in Residence at Lewis & Clark College since early 2019.  This volunteer role follows a 40-year career, mostly spent overseas, as an American diplomat and later as CEO of the American Chamber of Commerce in Australia.  His current role focuses on advising students on overseas careers, as well as giving occasional lectures describing the critical work done by American diplomats to advance the national interest.

Career highlights include ambassadorships to four African countries – Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Madagascar, and the Comoros – and his final posting as US Consul General in Sydney, Australia.   Ambassador Marquardt’s other diplomatic assignments include Thailand (twice), the People’s Republic of the Congo, France, and Germany, all but one in economic policy leadership roles.  He also served earlier in his career as a Peace Corps volunteer in Zaire and Rwanda.

Ambassador Marquardt speaks German, French, Spanish, and Thai, and used these and other languages extensively over his long career to build useful relationships across cultures.    He graduated from Lewis & Clark College with a BA in German literature (1975), and earned Master’s Degrees from the Thunderbird School of Global Management (1980) and the National War College (1995).  He and his wife Judi raised four daughters overseas, two of whom continue to live abroad themselves. 

Largest City:

Antananarivo