May 19, 1987

The President today announced his intention to nominate Leonard Grant Shurtleff, of New Hampshire, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Counselor, as Ambassador of the United States of America to the People's Republic of the Congo. He succeeds Alan Wood Lukens.

Before joining the Foreign Service in 1962, Mr. Shurtleff was a utility/dairyman and milkman at Wason MacDonald Dairy in Haverhill, MA, 1956 - 1962. He trained as a junior Foreign Service officer in the State Department for a year before his assignment to the U.S. Embassy in Caracas, Venezuela, 1963 - 1965. In 1965 he went to Freetown, Sierra Leone, as political officer and served there until 1967, when he returned to Washington and became an intelligence analyst in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. From 1969 to 1970, he took African studies at the University of Chicago. In 1970 Mr. Shurtleff was assigned as principal officer at the United States consulate in Douala, Cameroon, and in 1972 became deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Nouakchott, Mauritania. From 1975 to 1977, he was special assistant to the Ambassador as narcotics coordinator at the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia. He returned to the State Department as Alternate Director in the Office of Inter-African Affairs, 1977 - 1979, and became Deputy Director of the Office of Central African Affairs, 1979 - 1981. From 1981 to 1983, he served as Deputy Executive Director in the Bureau of African Affairs before being assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Monrovia, Liberia, in 1983 as deputy chief of mission. Since 1986 he has been a member of the senior seminar at the Foreign Service Institute.

Mr. Shurtleff graduated from Tufts University (B.A., 1962). He is articulate in French and Spanish. He is married and resides in Meredith, NH. He was born on June 4, 1940, in Boston, MA.

 

Date
05/19/1987