Benjaminson, Eric D., 1960-

Eric D. Benjaminson was a career diplomat specializing in economic and African Affairs, serving 32 years in the foreign service. His most notably posting was as the ambassador to Gabon and São Tomé and Principe from 2010 to 2013. 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.

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. 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.

He studied graduate-level economics at the Foreign Service Institute in 1988.

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. He then served as special assistant to the acting secretary of state for economic affairs from 1995-1996.

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

He returned to Africa in 2003, serving as deputy chief of mission in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso; from 2005 to 2008, he served as deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Windhoek, Namibia. 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.

After retiring from the foreign service, he returned to the University of Oregon, earning an MA in Russian History and serving as the Senior Adviser for Global Partnerships and managed Oregon’s partnerships with Gabon and Senegal. Since July 2018, he has served as the 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 at the University of Chicago.

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. He also served as Melvin Hill Visiting Professor of the Humanities at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in New York State. He was awarded a Superior Honor Award from the U.S. Department of State and the Grand Cross of the Equatorial Order of Gabon.

Benjaminson speaks French, Russian, Chinese, and Swedish. His wife Paula is a former diplomat who switched to fiber art. The couple has two daughters, Emma and Molly.