Michael Carpenter is a distinguished fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center, Europe Center, and Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Previously, he served in the Biden administration as special assistant to the president and senior director for Europe at the National Security Council. From 2021-2024, he was the US ambassador and permanent representative to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). For that role, he was confirmed by the United States Senate with unanimous consent.

Previously, Carpenter was senior director and then managing director of the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement at the University of Pennsylvania. In the Obama administration, he served as deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine, Eurasia, and conventional arms control. He also worked as a special advisor to the vice president and as director for Russia at the National Security Council. Before that, Carpenter was a career foreign service officer with the US State Department. He served overseas in the US embassies in Poland, Slovenia, and Barbados, as well as in Washington, DC.

Carpenter received four Superior Honor Awards and three Meritorious Honor Awards from the US State Department. He has also received fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation, the International Research & Exchanges Board, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Carpenter holds a BA in international relations from Stanford University, an MA and PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley. He speaks fluent Polish and Slovenian, as well as some German, French, and Czech. He enjoys skiing, hiking, movies, and traveling with his family.