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U.S. Consulate General Toronto

U.S. Consulate Toronto Speakers Bureau Speakers

360 University Ave, Toronto, ON M5G 1S4, Canada Tel: +1 416-595-1721

Juan A. Alsace

Mr. Alsace is a career Senior Foreign Service Officer with 29 years of service. Prior to assuming his cur-rent position in August 2015, Mr. Alsace was an As-sistant Professor at the National Defense University (Eisenhower College, 2014-2015). He was previous-ly Director of the Office of Caribbean Affairs in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs (2012-2014) and Chief of the War Crimes, Democracy and Human Rights Division in the Bureau of Intelligence and Re-search (2010-2012). Mr. Alsace returned to Washington service following several years of overseas postings, including in Iraq as Team Leader of an embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team (2009-2010), Economic and Political Counselor in Santiago, Chile (2006-2009), and Consul General in Bar-celona, Spain (2003-2006). Mr. Alsace is a Distinguished Graduate of the National War College (2003). He has also served in Is-tanbul, Turkey as Deputy Principal Officer (1999-2002) and in several other Washington assign-ments, including as desk officer for Lebanon and for Kazakhstan, as a staff assistant to the NEA As-sistant Secretary, and as Pearson Fellow in the office of Senator Russell Feingold, who was then on the Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Alsace has also been posted to Karachi, Santo Domin-go, and Quito. Originally from Buffalo, NY, Mr. Alsace is a graduate of Marquette University in Mil-waukee, WI and obtained his law degree from the University of Minnesota. He practiced law for three years before joining the Foreign Service. Mr. Alsace has received several State Department Awards, including three Superior Honor Awards and four Meritorious Honor Awards. He is married to Nancy, a nurse practitioner, and has two children. He speaks Spanish and remembers a few useful Turkish phrases.

Jeanne Chadwick Geers

Jeanne Chadwick Geers is a Political and Economic Officer at the U.S. Consulate in Toronto, Canada. She has also served in Ukraine and Estonia. Prior to joining the Department of State she served in the U.S. Army Reserves and was a Presidential Manage-ment Fellow at the International Trade Administra-tion. She also worked at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Jeanne has a B.A. from Rhodes College and an M.A. from the Universi-ty of Washington.

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Nathan Tidwell Nathan Tidwell arrived in Toronto as the Visa chief in August 2016. He served in New Delhi, India for four years, managing visa operations in New Delhi and coordinating the consular sections around In-dia. Previously, he served in the consular sections in Bogota, Colombia as IV chief and Santiago, Chile as a vice consul. His first assignment in the Foreign Ser-vice was the management officer in Lahore, Pakistan. Prior to joining the Foreign Service in 2005, Nathan worked in the U.S. Defense Department for five years, while earning an MBA degree from Rutgers University. His wife, two children, two cats, and a dog live with him in Port Credit.

Frankie Day

Frankie Day is a foreign service officer with the US Department of State since 2013. She has served in Kingston, Jamaica and now in Toronto, Canada. She is from Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2009 she graduat-ed with two degrees, one in English and Mass Com-munications from Winston Salem State University. After college, she moved to Hunan, China for four years, teaching English Literature at Changsha Uni-versity. Her favorite part of being a diplomat is get-ting meet so many amazing people, as well as getting to represent the diversity of America.

Margaret Ramsay Margaret Ramsay arrived in Toronto in June 2016 and is a consular officer in the American Citizen Services unit. Maggie joined the U.S. Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer in 2008. She has served overseas tours in Mumbai, India and War-saw, Poland. Most recently she served in Washing-ton D.C. in the State Department’s Bureau of Consu-lar Affairs, in the office of Overseas Citizens Ser-vices. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Maggie worked as a research assistant at Royal Holloway, University of London. Maggie holds a BA in Sociology from Boston University and is originally from upstate New York.

U.S. Consulate General Toronto 360 University Ave, Toronto, ON M5G 1S4, Canada Tel: +1 416-595-1721

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Grace Chung Grace Chung joined the Foreign Service in 2013 and served in Dhaka, Bangladesh, before moving to To-ronto. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, she lived in Seattle and worked as a bookseller and a librarian. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia and the University of Washington. Grace was born and raised in the American South, which is significantly warmer than Ontario, and welcomes advice on how to survive a Canadian winter.

Caren Brown Caren Brown has served as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State for 11 years. She is currently the Management Officer for U.S. Consulate General Toronto. Her previous assignments include Sydney, Australia; Kabul, Afghanistan; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Bujumbura, Burundi. Ms. Brown has served in all five diplomatic disciplines, including as a Consular Officer, Political Officer and Public Di-plomacy Officer. Prior to her service with the U.S. State Department, Caren was an IT professional, be-ginning her career as a mainframe software program-mer and ending her private sector career as a direc-tor of Systems Management and Monitoring. Prior to her diplomatic career, Ms. Brown worked for a number of major corporations, including The Hartford Insurance Group, Prudential, American Ex-press and IBM. She holds a Bachelor degree in Finance from The University of Connecticut. Alt-hough she now considers Phoenix, Arizona her home, Caren is originally from the greater Hartford, Connecticut area.

Shirlene Yee Shirlene Yee is a Vice Consul at the U.S. Consulate in Toronto. She has also served in the Philippines and lived for six years in East Asia. Before joining the U.S. Foreign Service, Shirlene conducted research at the Center for Strategic & International Studies in Wash-ington, D.C. She holds a dual M.A. in International Studies degree from both the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies (SAIS) and from Nanjing Univer-sity in China. Shirlene is originally from Tucson, Ari-zona.

U.S. Consulate General Toronto 360 University Ave, Toronto, ON M5G 1S4, Canada Tel: +1 416-595-1721