She has served in Eritrea, a one-party state and highly-militarized society. She also served at the U.S. Mission to the UN agencies in Rome, in Amman, Jordan; Kuwait, Ethiopia, and in Conakry, Guinea. Natalie speaks French, studied Arabic, German and Amharic. She also speaks a little Italian, and Tigrinya, an Afro-Asiatic dialect used in Eritrea.
Natalie E. Brown, the incoming
United States’ Ambassador to Uganda served in the North African country of
Tunisia at the time of the Tunisian Revolution. She witnessed the Tunisian
revolution an intensive 28-day campaign against the government corruption,
social inequalities and unemployment that saw the ousting of the President Ben
Ali in January 2011. Ben Ali had ruled the country for 22 years.
Brown worked at the US Embassy in
Tunisia, when an attack at the Embassy in Tunis in September 2012 occurred. The
attack on the embassy and an American school in the town followed a US-made
film reportedly demeaning Prophet Mohammad. Four people died in the ensuing clashes.
While in Tunisia, Brown says her
role was to keep others strong. She describes herself as a resilient person who
does not back down from challenges, but also a crisis manager and this is what
has kept her going over the years in her career spanning almost three decades.
“When I was assigned to Tunisia,
our Embassy was attacked, and there were people who depended on me. I needed to
be resilient so they could do their jobs.” Natalie said in an interview with Women
in Foreign Policy, an online journal that inspires girls and women to pursue
careers in foreign policy.
A career member of the US Foreign
Service, Brown carries experience working in countries of semi democratic and
authoritarian leadership. She has vast experience working in Africa, Middle
East and domestically in the USA.
She has served in Eritrea, a one-party state and highly-militarized
society. She also served at the U.S.
Mission to the UN agencies in Rome, in Amman, Jordan; Kuwait, Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, and in Conakry, Guinea. Natalie speaks French, studied Arabic
and German and Amharic. She also speaks a little Italian, and Tigrinya, an
Afro-Asiatic dialect used in Eritrea.
She was one of the Senior Watch
Officers on duty on September 11, 2001, when a series of coordinated terrorist
groups of Al Qaeda attacked the World Trade Center killing up to 2,977 people.
According to the US Department of
State’s Certificate of competency for nominees to be chiefs of mission, she has
garnered both bilateral and multilateral diplomacy with a strong focus on
Africa and has got a distinguished record of leadership thus making her
qualified to be the next US Ambassador in Uganda.
“I've done a little bit of
everything, from ordering supplies for the embassy to managing assistance funds.
I've spent the past three years working on food security issues with the UN
agencies charged with increasing agriculture production and reducing hunger,”
Brown says in Women in Foreign Policy.
After spending three years in
Rome working in a multi-lateral environment, she was envious of the ability of
the people working around her to switch so effortlessly between languages,
something that defined her love for learning new languages.
She is a free-spirited person who
loves cooking, art and Music. Brown’s love for Art Paintings, can be see-through her regular social media posts and comments on various kinds of arts
pieces and their uniqueness. She particularly loves coffee paintings and has
always appreciated the expression portrayed in the art and the composure.
Brown’s journey as a diplomat was
not an easy one. She went through a complex vetting process to finally become
an Ambassador. However, the road for equal opportunity for a woman, let alone
an African American was bumpy as few were considered into service. Luckily for
Natalie, climbing the diplomatic ladder was a mix of positives and negatives.
She joined the State Department
shortly after Alison Palmer, a diplomat, filed a lawsuit against the State Department
for discrimination and won. This gave many women a chance, as the state
department focused on employing more women and their growth in service. Natalie
says the success of this lawsuit helped her in her career.
“They gave me opportunities that
otherwise would have been denied to me. At the same time, people would say you
got in because you're a woman and you're black." Natalie says.
Natalie Brown earned a Bachelor
of Science degree with a concentration in comparative studies of Africa and
Western Europe from Georgetown University’s Edmund E. Walsh School of Foreign
Service. From 1998-1999, she was one of
two State Department Officers assigned to the Marine Corps Command and Staff
College where she earned a Master of Science degree in Military Studies.
She is from Omaha, Nebraska. Her two dogs, Cashmere, from the Animal
Welfare League of Arlington, Virginia, and Riko, adopted in Kuwait, travel with
her.
Brown will be stepping into and
filling Deborah Ruth Malac’s big shoes as her tenure comes to an end. Malac’s
stay in Uganda has been that of advocating for rights and freedom of Ugandans,
but also supporting women and the health sector. She has personally taken to
the streets in the protest against the murder of women in Entebbe and condemned
Government action against the opposition and civilian.
Brown meanwhile has not been in
the news, perhaps due to the fact that this will be her first posting as a full
Ambassador, but this could also change as she moves to a semi-democratic
country Uganda from more authoritarian countries.
