Maureen Cormack

Cormack received her B.A. in performing arts management from the University of Illinois. She worked for a Chicago law firm and the Ravinia Festival, an outdoor music series near Chicago, in fundraising, public relations, and artistic management.[1] Her personal love of the arts continues today, and much of her career in the Foreign Service has been spent in public and cultural affairs. In an interview in Bosnia, she said "I am a fan of the symphony, the opera and the ballet," which, in Sarajevo, she enjoys at the restored National Theater.[2] She then attended the University of Chicago, earning an M.A. in international relations in 1989.

Ambassador Cormack joined the Foreign Service in 1989, and in early assignments served as Director of the American Centers in Kwangju, South Korea and Warsaw, Poland. She then served as Deputy Cultural Attaché at the U.S. embassy in Paris, and as Consul at the American Presence Post (APP) in western France.[3]

In 2005, Cormack returned to Washington, DC and became a Pearson Fellow, working on Capitol Hill. The Pearson Fellowships give Foreign Service officers the chance to spend a year learning about the work of Congress. She worked with the House Homeland Security Committee.

In 2006, Cormack moved back to the State Department and became deputy director for Korean Affairs, where she served until 2009. Towards the end of her tenure, she helped deal with the arrest of two American journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, by North Korea, who were eventually freed.[1]

Cormack served as director of the Office of Western European Affairs until 2010. She was then named executive assistant in the Office of the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs. In July 2011, Cormack became principal deputy coordinator of the Bureau of International Information Programs. Prior to arriving in Sarajevo, she served in Washington D.C. as the Chief of Staff to the Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL.[4]