Ambassador (ret.) Alina L. Romanowski is a distinguished national security leader advising clients in the areas of national security, geopolitical and geoeconomic risk, business strategy and crisis management with a focus on the Middle East. She works with clients to develop actionable, practical and effective strategies in a broad range of issues related to business in the Middle East region. She has held key C-suite equivalent leadership positions at the Departments of State and Defense, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the Central Intelligence Agency and played a pivotal role in shaping and implementing international policies, forging strategic partnerships in the U.S. and abroad, and driving high-stakes initiatives in some of the world’s most complex geopolitical landscapes.
She was appointed American ambassador to Iraq from 2022-2024 under President Biden,and from 2020-2022 as ambassador to Kuwait under the first administration of President Trump. As ambassador to Iraq, she led the largest U.S. embassy in world, re-shaping strategic U.S. defense and financial engagements with the new Iraqi government, promoted American commercial engagement and developed policies to safeguard U.S. personnel and interests during significant regional conflict.
As the U.S. Ambassdor during Kuwait’s total COVID-19 country lockdown, she quickly shifted the way the Embassy conducted diplomacy by building the most active, broad-based social media platforms, ramping up the full range of commercial, social and diplomatic relationships.
Earlier, as the Department of State’s Principal Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism, she expanded global mechanisms for coordination and integration of U.S. counterterrorism policies and programs. In prior positions, she launched two unprecedented private sector investment initiatives—the Egyptian-American Enterprise Fund and the Tunisian-American Enterprise Fund, to spur economic growth and foreign investment in the Middle East.
At the Defense Department, she spearheaded the dramatic expansion of U.S. defense cooperation across the Middle East after the first Gulf War and established at the National Defense University the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies, the preeminent U.S. defense institution for promoting regional security cooperation across the Middle East and Central and South Asia regions.
Amb. Romanowski is a recipient of a Presidential Distinguished Rank Award; two Presidential Meritorious Rank Awards; several Department of State Superior Rank Awards; two Secretary of Defense Meritorious Civilian Service Awards; and several CIA exceptional performance awards.
Amb. Romanowski holds an M.A. and a B.A. from the University of Chicago and studied at Tel Aviv University. She speaks French and learned Arabic and Hebrew. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the boards of Amideast and the World Affairs Councils of America, and is a distinguished non-resident fellow with the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative at the Atlantic Council’s Middle East programs.