Benjaminson, Eric D., 1960-

<p> Eric D. Benjaminson, the U.S. ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Principe, is a career diplomat specializing in economic and African Affairs. He presented his credentials in Gabon on December 3, 2010.</p>

<p>On his father’s side, Benjaminson comes from a family of Latvian Jews who emigrated to South Africa and the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Born March 2, 1960, Benjaminson earned a BA degree in history from the University of Oregon in 1981. He was a teaching fellow in history at the university and worked as an editor at a research institute and as a technician at a Hewlett-Packard factory before joining the Foreign Service in 1982.</p>

<p>His first assignments were as the economic officer in the State Department’s Office of Southern African Affairs in Washington and as a consular officer at both the U.S. Consulate General in Montreal, Canada, and the U.S. embassy in Lagos, Nigeria.</p>

<p>Benjaminson then worked at the U.S. embassy in Beijing as the economic officer responsible for financial and development issues. In preparation for that assignment, he studied Chinese for two years in Washington and Taiwan.</p>

<p>He studied graduate-level economics at the Foreign Service Institute in 1988.</p>

<p>From 1993-1995, Benjaminson was responsible for U.S. involvement in the Paris Club, a group of creditor nations that deals with debtor nations, and other external debt issues in the State Department’s Economic Bureau.</p>

<p>He served as special assistant to the acting secretary of state for economic affairs from 1995-1996.</p>

<p>For the next three years, Benjaminson was at the U.S. embassy in Sweden, where he concentrated on environmental, aviation and energy issues.</p>

<p>In 1999, he moved to Belgium to be counselor for economic affairs at the U.S. embassy and had responsibility for a variety of bilateral and multilateral trade, financial and environmental questions.</p>

<p>It was back to Africa in 2003, serving as deputy chief of mission in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.</p>

<p>From 2005 to 2008, he served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Windhoek, Namibia.</p>

<p>His last assignment prior to becoming an ambassador for the first time was as minister counselor for economic affairs at the U.S. embassy in Ottawa, Canada, from 2008 to July 2010.</p>

<p>Benjaminson has been a special lecturer on African and development issues at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in California, at the University of Southern California, at Carleton University in Ottawa and at the University of Ottawa.</p>

<p>His foreign languages are French, Chinese and Swedish. His wife Paula is a former diplomat who switched to fiber art. The couple has two daughters, Emma and Molly.</p>

<p>Eric Benjaminson is Assistant Director of Study Abroad, responsible for general health & safety policy as well as overseeing Chicago’s direct enrollment programs in the UK/Ireland, Japan, and Korea and faculty-led programs in Dakar (African Civilizations) and Vienna (Western Civilization, Human Rights). Eric came to Chicago in June 2018 from the University of Oregon, where he served as the Senior Adviser for Global Partnerships and managed Oregon’s partnerships with Gabon and Senegal. Eric’s first career was in the U.S. State Department where he served for 32 years, retiring in 2013 as the U.S. Ambassador to Gabon and concurrently to Sao Tome & Principe. He was posted in a number of countries, mostly in Africa and northern Europe. Eric has a B.A. (Honors) in History and an M.A in Russian History from the University of Oregon, and he speaks French and Russian. He is particularly proud of his stellar acting career – in 1978 he was an extra in the food fight scene in the classic higher education film Animal House. In high school, Eric was an exchange student in Amsterdam and he lived in Israel while his father was there on a research fellowship. Eric is married with two adult daughters and a son. In his free time, he and his wife Lara enjoy traveling, flying with his private pilot’s license, and exploring Chicago with their two very large retrievers, Sasha and Jackson.</p>

<p>Ambassador Eric Benjaminson served 32 years in the U.S. diplomatic service, retiring in 2013 as the U.S. Ambassador to Gabon and Sao Tome & Principe and to the Central African Economic Community. Previous to that assignment, he was Minister-Counselor for Economic Affairs at the U.S. Embassy to Canada; Acting U.S. Ambassador to Namibia; and Deputy Head of Mission in Burkina Faso. At various times, he also served in Nigeria, China, Ivory Coast, and Brussels.</p>

<p>Eric currently serves as Senior Adviser for Global Partnerships at the University of Oregon in the U.S., and manages the university’s Gabon-Oregon Center for Transnational Research on Sustainable Development. He also works as a consultant to international investors and energy companies entering or doing business in West and Central Africa.</p>

<p>Eric was awarded a Superior Honor Award from the U.S. Department of State and the Grand Cross of the Equatorial Order of Gabon. He was also Melvin Hill Visiting Professor of the Humanities at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York State. He has an honors degree in history from the University of Oregon and certificates from the U.S. Department of State in Chinese language and international economics. He speaks French and Russian.</p>