Herro Mustafa


Herro Kader Mustafa is an American diplomat who is the current U.S. Ambassador to Bulgaria. She carries the rank of Counselor, the lowest of four ranks in the Senior Foreign Service.
Mustafa's family story was the subject of the documentary film American Herro. She is multilingual and speaks English, Kurdish, Arabic, Turkish, Spanish and Greek.

Early life and education

Mustafa was born in Erbil, Iraq, in the Kurdistan region, to a Kurdish family and spent two years of her childhood in a refugee camp. Her family sought asylum in the United States in 1976. Her father was a Kurdish political activist and an opponent of the regime of Saddam Hussein. The family was taken in by Zion Lutheran Church at Minot, North Dakota in 1976.
Mustafa graduated from Minot High School in 1991 and earned her undergraduate degree from the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 1995 where she studied national security and the Middle East. She also received a master's degree in international relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

Career

After graduation, she directed a non-governmental organization for Kurdish studies in the U.S., traveled to Bosnia to supervise provincial elections and served as the Senior Editor for the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.
Mustafa joined the United States Foreign Service in 1999 and served in Athens, Beirut, Washington, D.C..
Mustafa was senior advisor on the Middle East to Vice President Joe Biden from March 2009 to 2011.
Mustafa has been nominated for the Department of State Human Rights and Democracy Achievement award and has received the Superior Honor Award and Meritorious Honor Award for her work.
Mustafa once served as Political Minister Counselor at the United States Embassy in India, and has been Deputy Chief of Mission at the United States Embassy in Portugal since July 2016.
Mustafa was United States chargée d'affaires in Portugal from the end of Robert A. Sherman's term as Ambassador on January 20, 2017 to August 25, 2017, when she was replaced by George Edward Glass also as Ambassador. She drew notice for being a Muslim former refugee serving the Donald Trump administration.
June 2019, Mustafa was nominated ambassador to Bulgaria by the Trump administration. Her nomination was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on September 26, 2019. She presented her credentials to President Rumen Radev on October 18, 2019.