Dogu, Laura Farnsworth, 1964-

<p>Laura Farnsworth Dogu (born 1964) is an author, diplomat and former United States Ambassador to Nicaragua. She was nominated by President Barack Obama on May 14, 2015 and confirmed by the Senate on August 5, 2015.</p>

<p>Dogu is a resident of Texas. Her father was a career Naval officer. Dogu earned a B.A., B.B.A. (1985) and M.B.A. (1989) from Southern Methodist University in Dallas. She later earned a M.S. from the Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy in 2007.</p>

<p>Dogu began her career as a marketing representative for IBM, where she worked for five years. After joining the Foreign Service, she became a consular officer at the embassy in San Salvador in 1991. She then served as a consular and political officer at the American Embassy in Turkey. Returning to Washington, D.C. in 1996, she was assigned to the State Department operations center. A year later she became a staff assistant in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. International assignments followed in Egypt, Turkey and Mexico. When she was nominated by President Obama to become U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, she was serving as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.</p>

<p>Dogu is also an author. Along with Taylor Larimore, Mel Lindauer and Richard Ferri, Dogu is a co-author of <i>The Bogleheads' Guide to Retirement Planning</i>. She is one of the leaders of the online Bogleheads (www.bogleheads.org).</p>

<p>Dogu is married. She and her husband Aydin have two children. In addition to English, she speaks Spanish, Turkish and Arabic.</p>

<p>In May 2015, President Barack Obama nominated Laura Farnsworth Dogu, a career member of the Foreign Service, to be the next ambassador to Nicaragua. She was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 5. It is Dogu’s first such post.</p>

<p>Dogu attended Southern Methodist University, earning BA and BBA degrees in 1985 and an MBA in 1989, as well as an MS from the National Defense University in 2007. Before joining the State Department, she was a marketing representative for IBM. Her business skills served her well later on.</p>

<p>Dogu’s first overseas assignment was in 1991 in El Salvador, as a consular officer in the embassy in San Salvador. It was the first of many consular assignments for Dogu. Beginning in 1994, she was a consular and political officer in the U.S. embassy in Ankara, Turkey. She came home in 1996 to serve as a watch officer in the State Department operations center. The following year, she was made a staff assistant in the Bureau of Consular Affairs.</p>

<p>Dogu went overseas again 1999 as a consular officer, this time at the embassy in Cairo. She then returned to Ankara and served from 2002 to 2006 as the consular section chief there. In 2007, she was made Consul General in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, just across the Rio Grande from El Paso, Texas. Part of her duties there involved dealing with American victims of the drug war that raged in the border region.</p>

<p>Dogu returned to Washington in 2010 as Deputy Executive Director in the Bureau of Consular Affairs. In 2012, she was made Deputy Chief of Mission in the embassy in Mexico City, a job she held until her nomination for the Managua post.</p>.

<p>While serving in the State Department, Dogu has also put her business acumen to good use. She became a frequent poster on the personal financial planning forum Bogleheads.org and co-authored a book with others from the site, <i>The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning</i>. In 2012, Money magazine named her a champion of small investors.</p>

<p>Dogu is married; she and her husband, Aydin, have two sons. She speaks Spanish, Turkish and Arabic.</p>