President Joe Biden announced his intention to nominate Ann Marie Yastishock as Ambassador to the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and the Republic of Vanuatu. On July 11, 2022, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee received the nomination.
Ann Marie Yastishock, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, currently serves as Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Asia, USAID. Previously, she was the USAID Mission Director in Hanoi, Vietnam. During the transition to the Biden-Harris Administration, she served as the Chief Advisor to the Acting Administrator and Chief Operating Officer for USAID.
Before that, she was the Acting Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Asia, responsible for USAID missions and programs in East Asia and the Pacific. Before that, she oversaw USAID activities in South and Central Asia as the Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Bureau for Asia. Earlier in her career, she served as the Deputy Mission Director for the regional office of USAID covering Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, and Cyprus. Other assignments include Interim Deputy Mission Director for USAID Burma; Deputy Director of the USAID Center of Excellence on Democracy, Human Rights and Governance; Senior Legal Advisor to USAID/Afghanistan; and Resident Legal Advisor to Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan. Before joining USAID, Yastishock worked as a Rule of Law Liaison for the American Bar Association/Central and East European Law Initiative with the parliaments of Kazakhstan and Tajikistan.
A native of Pennsylvania, Yastishock earned her B.S. in Economics from Pennsylvania State University and a J.D. from the Widener University School of Law. She is the recipient of numerous USAID performance awards and speaks Russian.
