In a distinguished career as a member of the U.S. Foreign Service, Ambassador Craig had numerous assignments both overseas and in the State Department. He pursued his career focus on economic analysis during assignments in Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt and Haiti. Craig speaks Arabic, French and Spanish.
He became deputy chief of mission at the American Embassy in the Syrian capital Damascus followed by a similar posting to the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia. On his return to the United States in 1995, he was appointed to head the Office of Arabian Peninsula Affairs in the State Department’s Near East Bureau.
Then, in June 1998, U.S. President Bill Clinton nominated Craig to be the United States Ambassador to Oman. After three years in the post he returned to the United States just after Sept. 11, 2001, to be appointed by President George W. Bush as a Special Assistant to the President for Combatting Terrorism. He served on the staff of the National Security Council with Gen. Wayne Downing, Deputy National Security Advisor.
In June, 2003, he was appointed as Boeing International Corporation’s regional vice president in the Middle East. He was responsible for coordinating Boeing business activities enterprise-wide in a number of countries across the region.
In March, 2008 the Ambassador joined The Jadwin Group (MENA) as full partner. The Jadwin Group’s goal is to provide high level investment services to private sector entities and high net worth individuals throughout the Gulf region. They intend to support investments that will bring knowledge and technology into the region and are committed to projects that will help to train, develop and employ young nationals in the Gulf Cooperation Council states.
In 2015, Ambassador Craig joined the Manaar Energy Group in Abu Dhabi as a Senior Partner. The group provides clients all over the world with valued analysis of the energy market with particular focus on Iran and Iraq and the Arab Gulf producers.
Since July, 2010, Ambassador Craig has Ambassador-in-Residence in the Center for Global Understanding and Peacemaking at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. He retains his business activities in the Middle East, while basing his operations from central Pennsylvania.
Ambassador Craig and an important Middle Eastern client organized Working Group on the Plight of Christians and Religious Pluralism in the Middle East. The Working Group is a bi-partisan, multi-faith project of the Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom, in Washington, DC. The goal of the Working Group is to identify results-oriented activities that will instill a sense of urgency and passion in interested parties, leading to outcomes that will save lives and restore stability to Christian populations as part of a religiously plural Middle East. The WG has been instrumental in proposing and implementing U.S. policy changes which have benefitted Christians across the Middle East.
Ambassador Craig is a graduate of the School of International Service at The American University in Washington DC. He received the equivalent of a Masters Degree in International Relations from The National Defense University (National War College) in Washington.
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