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Raised in New Mexico, she earned a B.A. in History from Brigham Young University, and an M.S. in National Security Strategy from the National War College of the National Defense University. She subsequently studied Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute in Roslyn, Virgini,a and at the State Department’s Field School in Tunis, Tunisia.
Name: Jones, Deborah
Current Position: Former Ambassador
Deborah K. Jones assumed the post of U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait on April 19, 2008.
Raised in New Mexico, she earned a B.A. in History from Brigham Young University, and an M.S. in National Security Strategy from the National War College of the National Defense University. She subsequently studied Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute in Roslyn, Virgini,a and at the State Department’s Field School in Tunis, Tunisia.
Jones joined the U.S. Department of State in 1982 and served for two years as Country Director of the Office of Arabian Peninsula and Iran Affairs. She also worked as Staff Assistant to Richard Murphy, the Assistant Secretary for the Office of Arabian Peninsula and Iran Affairs, and as Acting Public Affairs Advisor to the Assistant Secretary for Near East Affairs.
Jones then became Desk Officer for Jordan, and worked in the State Department’s Operations Center and on its Board of Examiners until 2005. From August 2005 to 2007, she served as Principal Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Istanbul, Turkey.
Jones’s additional foreign service work included assignments in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; Baghdad, Iraq; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Damascus, Syria.
She is married to U.S. Foreign Service officer Richard G. Olson, and has two daughters. Olson assumed the post of ambassador to the United Arab Emirates on September 23, 2008.