U.S. President-elect Joe Biden is expected to name Linda Thomas-Greenfield as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, media outets reported Sunday, citing Democratic sources close to Biden.
The appointment of Thomas-Greenfield, a Black woman who held a top diplomatic post in the administration of former President Barack Obama, was intended to restore morale and help fulfill Biden’s pledge to choose a diverse Cabinet, Axios, which first broke the news, reported.
Thomas-Greenfield is the “leading contendor” for the job, CNN reported.
Thomas-Greenfield served as the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa under Obama, from 2013 to 2017.
She led U.S. policy toward sub-Saharan Africa during tumultuous events such as the massive Ebola outbreak in West Africa.
After leaving the State Department, Thomas-Greenfield took a senior leadership position at former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s global strategy company, Albright Stonebridge Group. She is currently on leave from the company, according to her page on its website.
Thomas-Greenfield spent 35 years in the Foreign Service, retiring in 2017.
She served as assistant secretary of state for African affairs and was ambassador to Liberia during the Obama administration. She is now a senior counselor with the Albright Stonebridge advisory firm.
Biden’s transition team
Thomas-Greenfield is part of Mr. Biden’s transition team and is expected to focus on helping to restore trust and professionalism to the State Department, with a particular focus on diversity.
In it they wrote, “In Washington, career public servants who worked on controversial issues during the Obama administration, such as the Iran nuclear negotiations, have been smeared and attacked, their careers derailed.
“To start, the United States needs a top-to-bottom diplomatic surge. The Trump administration’s unilateral diplomatic disarmament is a reminder that it is much easier to break than to build. The country doesn’t have the luxury of waiting for a generational replenishment, marking time as new recruits slowly work their way up the ranks.”
Thomas-Greenfield’s aim will be to diversify the ranks of the Biden foreign policy team. “Diversity requires proactive attention by the administration. And when we look at what happened at the early stages of this administration – when people were encouraged to leave or asked to leave – there were significant numbers of diversity individuals, myself included, who left,” she told NPR in 2017.
