About the embassy 

Deputy Chief of Mission Damian R. Leader

Dr. Damian R. Leader has served as Deputy Chief of Mission of U.S. Embassy Vilnius since August 2007. 

He joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1985 and has spent most of his career dealing with European security and conflict resolution issues, most recently as Deputy Director of the State Department's Office of Russian Affairs.  His earlier assignments included service in London, Grenada, Brussels, and the Holy See, and in Washington as Deputy Director of Nordic and Baltic Affairs and on the French, NATO, OSCE, and Angola desks.  

He earlier served on the U.S. delegation to the 1991 OSCE Seminar, the 1992 Mozambique Peace Talks, the 1994-1995 Algerian Opposition conferences, the 1995-1998 Angolan Peace Talks, the 1996 OAU Summit, the 1997 Burundi Peace Talks, and he was seconded to the U.K. Foreign Office's Policy Planning Staff in 2000-2001.  He has spoken on U.S. foreign policy at Columbia, St. Petersburg State, and Cambridge Universities, and was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations' "Task Force on Northeastern Europe" 1998-1999.

Damian Leader is a graduate of the University of Toronto and taught at the University of Notre Dame before entering the Foreign Service. He has published 24 articles and reviews on history and diplomacy and wrote the first volume of the official History of the University of Cambridge. 

His wife Joan, and daughter Elizabeth, have accompanied him to Vilnius.