Africa to Australia and Other Adventures

Topic: Africa to Australia and Other Adventures

Ambassador Genta Hawkins Holmes has had a long and distinguished career in the Foreign Service.

She is now a professor and Diplomat in Residence at the University of California, Davis, a position she assumed following her service as United States Ambassador to the Commonwealth of Australia. She had previously been Director General of the Foreign Service and Director of Personnel for the Department of State.

She was America's first Ambassador to Namibia (1990 - 1992), following her assignment as Deputy Chief of Mission in the U.S. Embassy in South Africa at the time of transition from apartheid to democracy in 1989 - 1990.

She was also Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Haiti during a tense and violent period, 1986 - 1988, and in Malawi from 1984 to 1986. She received her first Presidential appointment in 1979 as the Assistant Administrator for Legislative Affairs of the Agency for International Development . She was the first woman selected by the State Department as an American Political Science Association Fellow in 1977 - 1978. Mrs. Holmes also served at the American embassies in Paris and in Abidjan in the Ivory Coast.

She is a graduate of the University of Southern California (magna cum laude) and was a Rotary Fellow at the London School of Economics.

Ambassador Holmes holds both the Presidential and Superior Honor Awards of the State Department. She is married to Michael Dayton Holmes, a former Marine and Vietnam War veteran.