AMBASSADOR

Ambassador Robert J. Callahan

Robert J. Callahan

Robert J. Callahan was sworn in as ambassador to Nicaragua in July of 2008 and arrived in Managua a month later. A career foreign service officer, Ambassador Callahan joined the diplomatic corps in 1979 and served throughout the 1980s in Costa Rica as assistant cultural affairs officer, in Honduras as cultural attaché and then press officer, and in London as ambassador’s speechwriter and assistant press attaché. In 1989 he was assigned to La Paz, Bolivia, as counselor for public affairs.

After a tour in Washington from 1992-95, Ambassador Callahan served as counselor for public affairs in Athens and minister counselor for public affairs in Rome. In 2002 he returned to the United States, where he taught various courses on strategic studies for two years at the National War College in Washington, D.C. on a detail assignment from the State Department. In 2004, he volunteered to serve for one year as embassy spokesman and press attaché in Baghdad.

Upon returning from Iraq, Ambassador Callahan helped to establish the press office at the newly created Office of the Director of National Intelligence in Washington, D.C. He then accepted the position as the first public diplomacy fellow at the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, where he taught, lectured, and wrote. He speaks Spanish, Greek, and Italian.

Ambassador Callahan has a BA in modern European history from Loyola University in Chicago and an MA in American history from DePaul University, also in Chicago. He was an editor at Loyola University Press before joining the Foreign Service.

Ambassador Callahan, who was born in Chicago in 1948, is married to the former Deborah Brown and they have two grown sons.