Bell, Colleen Bradley, 1967-

Ambassador Colleen Bell was appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as the United States’ Ambassador to Hungary and was confirmed by the United States Senate in December 2014. Ambassador Bell presented her credentials to President of Hungary János Áder on January 21, 2015.

Prior to her diplomatic service abroad, Ambassador Bell was a leading business executive at an award-winning production company responsible for some of the most-watched television programming in the world, reaching more than 40 million people in more than 100 countries across five continents. While a producer at Bell-Phillip Television Productions in Los Angeles, Ambassador Bell’s work frequently earned the field’s most prestigious recognition for creative content, social awareness, and public-health education. Ambassador Bell’s artistic vision has been recognized for its pioneering impact on the lives of a wide array of marginalized populations in the United States and abroad.

In addition to her long career in international business and the arts, Ambassador Bell is a dedicated philanthropist and an industry-leading advocate committed to tackling some of the United States’ most vexing domestic and global public policy challenges. Ambassador Bell’s public service work and her successful record of strategic and organization planning have led to the implementation of critical initiatives in natural-resource protection, child-abuse prevention, crime victim counseling and care, public-health awareness, and art accessibility. Prior to assuming her role leading Embassy Budapest, Ambassador Bell served on the boards of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, UCLA Medical Center’s Rape Treatment Center Foundation, the Children’s Institute, Inc., and the Natural Resource Defense Council’s Los Angeles and Global Leadership Councils.

Ambassador Bell was born in Evanston, Illinois on January 30, 1967. She studied economics and political science at Sweet Briar College in Sweet Briar, Virginia, and graduated in 1989 with a bachelor's degree. She is married to writer/producer Bradley Bell, with whom she has four children.

Ambassador Bell concluded her service as U.S. Ambassador to Hungary on January 20, 2017. California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed her to head up the state’s film commission on May 23, 2019.