Ambassador Richard LeBaron is a nonresident senior fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Middle East Programs focusing on the Gulf and on broad social change in the MENA region. He is a career diplomat with over thirty years of experience abroad and in Washington. His most recent overseas posting was as deputy chief of mission at the US embassy in London from August 2007 to August 2010. Amb. LeBaron served as chargé d’affaires in London from February to August 2009. Previous to his assignment to London, Amb. LeBaron served as the US ambassador to Kuwait (2004 to 2007). From September 2001 to July 2004, Amb. LeBaron served as deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of the United States in Tel Aviv, Israel.

Amb. LeBaron was minister-counselor for political and economic affairs at the Embassy of the United States in Cairo, Egypt from 1998 to 2001. While posted in Washington from 1991 to 1998, he served in three positions related to the Middle East: director for Near East and South Asian affairs at the National Security Council, director of the Peace Process and Regional Affairs Office in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs at the Department of State, and Public Affairs Adviser for the Near Eastern Bureau. From 1991 to 1993, Amb. LeBaron was a political officer in the State Department’s Office of European Community Affairs. Amb. LeBaron’s earlier overseas diplomatic postings included: Lisbon (1989-91), Tunis (1986-89), New Delhi (1982-84), and Managua (1980-82). Before he entered the Foreign Service, the Ambassador held a two-year consultancy in Brazil working on science policy issues. Amb. LeBaron studied at the University of Colorado (BA) and The George Washington University (MA).