On September 2, 2022, President Joe Biden announced his intention to nominate Donna Ann Welton as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. On September 8, 2022, the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee received the nomination.

Donna Ann Welton, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor, currently serves as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Programs and Operations for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Before that, she was Assistant Chief of Mission in Kabul, Afghanistan, after three years serving as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki, Finland, where she served over eighteen months as Chargé d’affaires, ad interim. Earlier, she was on detail to the Department of Defense as the Acting Director for Southeast Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (Policy). Welton began her career with the United States Information Agency, serving in the Republic of Korea as the Assistant Cultural Affairs Officer in Seoul and as American Center Director in Daegu, then as American Center Director in Fukuoka, Japan, before returning to graduate school. She then worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the American Federation of Arts in New York. Welton returned to the Foreign Service at the Department of State in 2000, serving in public diplomacy positions in Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan, Washington, and Jakarta, Indonesia. Welton also served as Consul General in Sapporo, Japan. She then took over as Counselor for Public Affairs in Kabul and served at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations as Deputy Director of Communications and Public Affairs. Welton also served as Minister-Counselor for Political Affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, Japan. 

Welton earned her A.B. from Yale University and held a Master’s degree in Strategic Studies from the Army War College. She speaks Japanese fluently and also speaks Korean, Indonesian, German, some Dari, and Finnish.