O'Neal, Adrienne S., 1954-

<p>On June 24, 2011, President Barack Obama nominated Adrienne S. O’Neal to be the United States ambassador to Cape Verde, a Portuguese-speaking island nation 300 miles off the west coast of Africa. There is a significant Cape Verdean-American population, particularly in New Bedford, Massachusetts. O’Neal received her Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing on October 5, but she has yet to be confirmed by the full Senate.</p>

<p>Born circa 1954, O’Neal grew up in New Orleans with her father, Samuel O’Neal, and her mother, Vernese B. O’Neal, who served more than twenty years as director of admissions at Dillard University. After graduating from Abramson High School in 1972, O’Neal earned a double B.A. in Spanish Language and Business Administration at Spelman College in Atlanta and an M.M.L. in Spanish Language and Literature from Middlebury College in Vermont. She also completed the coursework, but not a thesis, for a PhD in Spanish and Portuguese Literature at the University of Minnesota–Twin Cities.</p>

<p>O’Neal, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the personal rank of minister-counselor, joined the State Department in 1983. Already proficient in Spanish and Portuguese, O’Neal received six months’ training in Italian and was sent on her first overseas mission to Rome, Italy. Other assignments have included service in Argentina; as Director of the Office of Public Affairs and Public Diplomacy for Europe and Eurasian Affairs; and a detail as Deputy Press Secretary to the Director of National Drug Control Policy at the White House.</p>

<p>O’Neal has also served as press attaché and chief of section at the U.S. Embassy in Maputo, Mozambique, circa 1995 to 1998; as consul general at the consulate in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, circa 1999 to 2003; and as chargé d’affaires and deputy chief of mission at the U. S. Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal, from June 2004 to July 2007. From August 2007 to July 2009, O’Neal was Diplomat in Residence at the Gerald Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. Returning to the State Department in Washington, DC, she served as the Director of the Senior Level Division of Career Development and Assignments in Human Resources from 2009 to 2011.</p>

<p>She has one son, Quincy O’Neal.</p>

<p>In 2011, Adrienne S. O’Neal, career Foreign Service officer with the rank of Minister Counselor, was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as ambassador to the Republic of Cabo Verde (or Cape Verde). O’Neal was born in Durham, North Carolina in 1954 to Samuel and Vernese Boulware O’Neal. Her mother was best known as a college professor and later Director of Admissions at Dillard University in New Orleans, Louisiana from 1970 to the early 1990s. Her father was an attorney.</p>

<p>O’Neal graduated from Spelman College (Atlanta, Georgia) in 1976 with dual Bachelor’s Degrees in Spanish Language and Business Administration. Two years later, she graduated from Middlebury College (Vermont) with a Master of Modern Languages degree in Spanish Language and Literature. In 1983, after a brief period in the Ph.D. program in Spanish and Portuguese Literature at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, she decided to pursue a career in the U.S. Foreign Service. Her first assignment in 1984 was at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, Italy. This was followed by a posting at the U.S. Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1987.</p>

<p>In 1991 O’Neal served as a Bureau of Public Affairs officer in the now post-Cold War U.S. State Department. Her first assignment was as Director for European and Eurasian Affairs where she was responsible for helping former Communist nations in Eastern Europe transition to democracy.</p>

<p>Returning to the United States in 1993, O’Neal was appointed by President Bill Clinton to be Deputy Press Secretary for Lee P. Brown, the Director of National Drug Control Policy (the Drug Czar). From 1995 to 1998, she served as the U.S. Embassy’s chief press agent in Maputo, Mozambique, during that nation’s transition to democratic rule after 15 years of socialist rule, civil war, and civil unrest.</p>

<p>From 1998 to 2003, O’Neal was Consul General in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and then from 2003 to 2006 she was Deputy Chief of Mission at the American Embassy in Lisbon, Portugal. In 2007 O’Neal returned to the United States where she became a Diplomat-in-Residence at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Her last posting before her ambassadorial appointment was as the U.S. State Department’s Director of the Senior Level Division of Career Development and Assignments in Human Resources.</p>

<p>As Ambassador of Cape Verde from 2011 to 2015, O’Neal has employed social media to promote American culture, democracy, and investment in the nation. She has also headed the U.S. effort to persuade Cape Verde to mount an anti-drug trafficking campaign. She has also worked to promote the use of English in the nation and gender equality.</p>

<p>In January 2015, Ambassador O’Neal’s term expired. She and her husband Quincy O’Neal returned to the United States.</p>

<p>Adrienne S. O'Neal (born 1954) is the former United States Ambassador to Cape Verde. On June 24, 2011, O'Neal was nominated by President Barack Obama to serve as Ambassador and was then confirmed by the United States Senate on October 18, 2011. O'Neal presented her credentials to Cape Verde's president, Jorge Carlos Fonseca, on December 9, 2011.</p>

<p>O'Neal was born in Durham, North Carolina, and raised in New Orleans. She is a resident of Michigan, and formerly served as Diplomat in Residence at the University of Michigan from 2007 to 2009. O'Neal received a B.A. in business administration and Spanish from Spelman College. She also earned an M.M.L. in Spanish language and literature from Middlebury College in Vermont.</p>

<p>Since joining the U.S. Foreign Service in 1983, O'Neal has since become a career member with the rank of Minister Counselor. She has previously served in Italy, Argentina, Mozambique, Brazil, Portugal and Washington, DC. She became Ambassador to Cape Verde in December, 2011, after appointment by President Barack Obama, replacing Marianne M. Myles. She left her post sometime in 2014.</p>