DIRECTORY 2022

Olofsdotter also studied for eight months in Moscow and a year at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, earning a bachelor’s degree in psychology, economics and Russian at Sweden’s University of Lund. She joined the Swedish Foreign Service in 1994 and was posted to Moscow and Brussels before returning to Stockholm later as chief of staff to three successive Swedish foreign ministers: Laila Freivalds (2003-06), Jan Eliasson (2006) and Carl Bildt (2006-08).

She then became minister-counselor and deputy chief of mission at the Swedish Embassy in Washington (2008-11), and ambassador to Hungary (2011-14). In 2016, she was named director-general for trade at the Foreign Ministry.

Olofsdotter and her husband, Hans Martin Bengtsson, have two children. She speaks Russian, French and English.

Ambassador

Embassy of Switzerland

2201 Wisconsin Avenue NW, Suite #300, Washington, DC 20007

Tel: +1 202 745-7900 | Email: washington@eda.admin.ch

Jacques Pitteloud, Switzerland’s ambassador to the US since 2019, was born in 1962 in Zürich. He joined the Swiss Foreign Service in 1987; his first overseas posting was as trade attaché at the Swiss Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

After serving in the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service (1990-95), he became the personal advisor to two successive defense ministers.

After having witnessed the Rwanda genocide in 1994, Pitteloud formed a group that successfully hunted down and brought many perpetrators to justice.

Pitteloud also directed arms control, disarmament, security policy and intelligence at the Foreign Ministry in Bern; he was also Switzerland’s ambassador to Kenya (2010-15). From 2015 until his current job, Pitteloud was director-general of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, overseeing a $3 billion budget.

Pitteloud earned a master’s degree and a PhD from the University of Zürich Law School. He graduated from Geneva University’s International Training Course in Security Policy.

Pitteloud is married with a daughter, and is fluent in French, English, German, Swiss German, Italian and Spanish. A passionate bird photographer, his photos have been published widely.

Embassy of Tajikistan

1005 New Hampshire Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20037

Tel: +1 202 223-6090 | Email: tajemus@mfa.tj

Farrukh Hamralizoda, born in 1966 in Dushanbe, was named Tajikistan’s ambassador to the US in 2020.

Hamralizoda was Tajikistan’s minister of economic development and trade (2009-12), state advisor on economic policy and assistant to the president on economic issues (2012-17), and chairman of the republic’s accounts chamber (2017-18).

Prior to his appointment, Hamralizoda chaired Tajikistan’s State Committee on Investments and State Property Management from 2018 to 2020.

Ambassador

Hamralizoda is fluent in English and Russian. The country he represents is the smallest in size—and the poorest in per-capita income—of the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia.

Embassy of Tanzania

1232 22nd Street NW, Washington, DC 20037

Tel: +1 202 884-1080 | Email: washington@nje.go.tz

Elsie Sia Kanza, Tanzania’s ambassador to the US, previously sat on the executive committee of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and was special advisor to its president. From 2011 to 2020, as head of the WEF’s regional agenda on Africa, she focused on complex systemic problems related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals and the African Union’s Agenda 2063. Kanza was also economic advisor to the president of Tanzania (2006-11); before that, she worked in various capacities at Tanzania’s finance ministry and its central bank (1997-2006).

In 2008, Kanza became an Archbishop Tutu Leadership Fellow, and in 2011 a WEF Young Global Leader. In 2020, Forbes Africa named her one of Africa’s 50 most powerful women. She has served on the boards of the Uongozi Institute, Mercy Corps Europe, the African Leadership Institute and The Nature Conservancy.

In 2015, Scotland’s University of Strathclyde—where she earned a master’s degree in finance— awarded Kanza an honorary doctorate in business administration for her role in “driving transformative impact in Africa.” She also has a master’s degree from Williams College in Massachusetts, and a bachelor’s from US International University-Africa in Nairobi.