Samoa’s ambassador to the United States is Aliioaiga Feturi Elisaia. He is also Samoa’s Permanent Representative for Samoa’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations and Samoa’s ambassador to Canada. Elisaia earned a degree in political science and administration from the University of the South Pacific and also studied diplomacy at Oxford. Most of his career has been spent in Samoa’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, although he was first secretary to the Samoa High Commission in Wellington, New Zealand.  Elisaia took over his ambassadorial posts in April 2003 when the previous ambassador, Tuiloma Neroni Slade, was chosen to serve as a judge on the International Criminal Court.