DIG NI TA RI E S | NEW ARRIVALS New arrivals
Vasilios Philippou High Commissioner for Cyprus
Pedro Vergés Ambassador of Dominican Republic
eral in Hong Kong. From 1997 to 2002, he served as first secretary at the permanent mission to the European Union and from 2002 to 2003, he returned to the foreign ministry in the department for Central and Eastern Europe, working on Balkan and Russian files. In 2003, he became a diplomatic adviser to the prime minister and in 2007, he was sent to Lebanon as ambassador. From 2011 to 2015, he was ambassador of Belgium in Senegal, with dual accreditation to Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. He then returned to the foreign ministry as director for the Middle East and North Africa.
Ambassador Philippou began his career in Brussels at the European Commission, but soon joined Cyprus’s foreign service and began working in the EU division of the ministry. Soon, he went to New York as a consul and four years later, he became the first secretary at the mission to the EU. He later returned to New York as consul general. Back at headquarters, he worked in economic affairs. Soon, he became counsellor in multilateral affairs before becoming ambassador to several Latin American countries, including Mexico. He returned to headquarters and later became high commissioner to Antigua and Barbuda, St. Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago. He is also currently Cyprus’ representative to the International Civil Aviation Organization in Montreal. The high commissioner speaks Greek, French and Spanish. He is married to Anthea Vanech.
Ambassador Vergés has had a long and varied career, much of it in the world of academia and culture. He has been a professor or visiting lecturer at schools in Spain, Dominican Republic and the U.S. From 1982 to 1991, he was executive secretary of the Dominican Institute of Hispanic Culture and from 1990 to 1993, he served as cultural director of the Hispanic Cultural Centre, based in Santo Domingo. In 1996, he was named ambassador to Spain with concurrent representation to Morocco, Finland, Norway and Andorra and four years later, he became ambassador in Spain. From 2004 to 2009, he was ambassador in Germany and from 2009 to 2013, he served as ambassador to Japan. Finally, from 2013 to 2016, he was ambassador to the Organization of American States. He later became minister of culture for Dominican Republic.
Svetlana Sashova Stoycheva-Etropolski Ambassador of Bulgaria
Thomas Winkler Ambassador of Denmark
Toomas Lukk Ambassador of Estonia
Svetlana Sashova Stoycheva-Etropolski joined the foreign ministry in 2003. At headquarters, she served in the information directorate and worked on Bulgaria’s accession to the EU. From 2007 to 2011, she headed the consular office at the consulate general in New York. From 2011 to 2014, she worked at headquarters, working on bilateral and transatlantic issues. In July 2014, she was posted to Ottawa as head of the political section. Before joining the ministry, she worked for the UN development program and on EU pre-accession projects. In 1996, she worked with the British Council to modernize Bulgarian vocational education. She holds a master’s degree in economics and speaks English and Russian, with a working knowledge of Spanish. She is married to Hristo Iliev Etropolsky.
Ambassador Winkler joined the foreign ministry as head of section in 1988, after having graduated from the law faculty at the University of Copenhagen. Two years later, he went on his first posting, as second secretary in Moscow. After two years in Russia, he moved on to Ukraine, where he served as deputy head of mission. In late 1994, he returned to headquarters, this time as deputy director of the department of EU law. In 1998, he became deputy head of mission at the embassy in Sweden. From 2002 to 2004, he returned again to headquarters, where he served as deputy director of the Russian department after which he became ambassador and undersecretary for legal affairs. In 2013, he became Denmark’s ambassador to Moscow. The ambassador also served as an associate professor of law between 2005 and 2013 at the University of Copenhagen.
Ambassador Lukk joined the foreign ministry’s political and international organizations division in 1993, after having spent eight years working at the Estonian Academy of Sciences. Three years later, he was sent to Estonia’s permanent mission at the UN in New York, where he spent three years. In 1999, he returned to Tallinn to work in security policy and arms control, after which, in 2002, he became ambassador to Latvia. From 2006 to 2008, he was director of the Eastern Europe, Caucasus and Central Asia division and was then appointed as ambassador to Georgia and Armenia in 2008. From 2012 to 2016, he was ambassador to China, Mongolia and Vietnam. Beginning in 2016, he was director of the Asia-Pacific, Australia, Africa, Latin America and Middle East division. The ambassador speaks Estonian, English, Russian, Finnish, Latvian and some French. He is married to Piret Lukk and they have two sons.
Vitae Verkammen Ambassador of Belgium
Ambassador Verkammen joined the foreign service in 1992 as an attaché in the cabinet of the foreign minister and from 1994 to 1997, he was consul at Belgium’s consulate gen-
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FALL 2018 | OCT-NOV-DEC