Professional Affiliation

Board Chair, The Asia Foundation

Expert Bio

Ambassador (ret.) Kathleen Stephens was a career diplomat in the United States Foreign Service, 1978-2015. She was the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea 2008-2011, the first woman and first Korean speaker to serve in that position. Other overseas assignments included postings to China, Korea, former Yugoslavia, Portugal, Northern Ireland, where she was U.S. Consul General in Belfast (1995-1998) during the negotiations culminating in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, and India, where she was U.S. Charge ‘d Affaires (2014-2015).

Ambassador Stephens served in Washington at the Department of State and the White House. These positions included acting Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs (2012), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs (2005-2007), Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2003-2005), and National Security Council Director for European Affairs at the Clinton White House.

Ambassador Stephens was President and CEO of the Korea Economic Institute of America from 2018 to 2023, and  William J. Perry Fellow for Korea at Stanford University from 2015 to 2018. Earlier she was Endowed Chair Professor for Language and Diplomacy at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, and Senior State Department Fellow at Georgetown University’s Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

She currently chairs the board of The Asia Foundation and The Korea Society.   She is a  senior advisor at McLarty Associates, and a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Council on Foreign Relations.  Her areas of focus currently are U.S. diplomacy, U.S.-Korea relations, and the Indo-Pacific more broadly.

Ambassador Stephens studied at Prescott College, the University of Hong Kong, Oxford University, and Harvard University.  She was a Peace Corps volunteer in Korea 1975-1977.