Natasha Franceschi is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Levant and Syria engagement in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs.  For the previous three years, she served as Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. and Deputy Chief of Mission in Tunisia.  Prior to that, she served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Slovakia. Her other previous assignments include Director of the State Department’s Office of Caucasus Affairs and Regional Conflicts, Deputy Director of the Office of Arabian Peninsula Affairs; Deputy Political Counselor at U.S. Embassy Baghdad; and Deputy Political Advisor at the U.S. Mission to NATO, where she oversaw NATO’s relationships with its partners in the Middle East and North Africa. She earlier served in Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Bosnia, Russia, and in various positions in the State Department’s Bureaus of Near Eastern and Political-Military Affairs. 

DAS Franceschi, a career member of the U.S. Foreign Service with the rank of Minister Counselor, hails from Northern California. She is a graduate of Swarthmore College and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University.