Deputy Chief of Mission

Eric Benjaminson - Deputy Chief of Mission (Windhoek, Namibia)

 

Eric Benjaminson is a career Foreign Service Officer specializing in African and economic affairs. Since August 2005, he has been Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Windhoek, Namibia. Immediately prior to that assignment, he served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

From 1999-2003, he was Counselor for Economic Affairs at the U.S. Embassy to Belgium, and had responsibility for a wide variety of bilateral and multilateral trade, financial and environmental and scientific issues. From 1996-1999, Mr. Benjaminson was the deputy in the Economic Section of the US Embassy in Sweden, where he concentrated on environmental, aviation, science and energy issues.

From 1995-1996, he served in Washington as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, and from 1993-1995 he was responsible for Paris Club and external debt issues in the State Department's Economic Bureau.  During that period, he often served as the State Department delegate to Paris Club debt rescheduling negotiations. Mr. Benjaminson previously served at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, China, as the economic officer responsible for financial and development issues.  In preparation for that assignment, he studied Chinese for two years both in Washington and Taiwan. 

Prior to that, he served as the economic officer in the Office of Southern African Affairs in Washington, working primarily on bilateral issues with South Africa and the Angolan-Namibian-South African trilateral peace discussions. He also had two earlier assignments at the U.S. Consulate General in Montreal and as a consular officer at the U.S. Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria.

Before entering the Foreign Service in 1982, Mr. Benjaminson worked as an editor at a Washington research institute and as a technician at a Hewlett-Packard factory in Oregon. Mr. Benjaminson received a B.A. degree with Honors in History from University of Oregon in 1980. He was a teaching fellow in History at that university from 1980-1981.  He also studied graduate-level economics at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute in 1988. His foreign languages are French, Chinese and Swedish.  He is married to Paula Brumbaugh (a former Foreign Service Officer) and they have two daughters – Emma (13) and Molly (11). He has published several articles on American and Jewish history, and his movie credits include a supporting role in the American film classic "Animal House".