Chargé d’Affaires a.i.
Ambassador Richard E. Hoagland
![]() |
| Ambassador Richard E. Hoagland, Chargé d’Affaires a.i. to Turkmenistan |
A member of the Senior Foreign Service (Minister-Counselor), Ambassador Hoagland’s previous assignment (1999-2001) was Director of the Office of Public Diplomacy in the South Asia Bureau of the State Department where his additional portfolio was Special Adviser to the National Security Council for public diplomacy on Afghanistan. His foreign assignments have included Russia (where he was Press Spokesman for the U.S. Embassy), Uzbekistan, and Pakistan twice -- the first time (1986-1989) working with the Afghan Resistance during the Soviet-Afghan War. He has also served in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research where he was the lead analyst for Afghanistan (1989-1991). Subsequently, because of his Afghanistan expertise, he was U.S. Deputy Special Envoy for Afghanistan (1991-1992). During the course of his career, he has received three State Department Honor Awards (one Meritorious, two Superior), as well as several group honor awards and Presidential Performance Awards.
Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Ambassador Hoagland completed his graduate degrees at the University of Virginia and earned a certificate in French from the University of Grenoble, France. Before joining the Foreign Service in 1985, Ambassador Hoagland taught English as a foreign language in the then-Zaire (1974-1976) and African literature at the University of Virginia's Carter-Woodson Institute of African and Afro-American Studies.



