Ambassador John Hoover is a career member of the United States Senior Foreign Service who began his career with the U.S. Department of State in 1988. Since 2020, he has served at the National Defense University (NDU) as the Acting Chancellor of the College of International Security Affairs (CISA) for one year starting in July, 2020, then as NDU’s Senior Vice President 2021-23, and currently as an interagency Faculty Advisor at CISA.
Before arriving at NDU, Hoover served as the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan from 2017 to 2020. From 2014 to 2017, he served as the U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Sierra Leone, where he helped lead the U.S. Government’s successful response to the world’s worst-ever Ebola outbreak. Before that, he was the Director of the Office of Regional and Security Affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs (2010-2013). Overseas, Hoover has served in Kampala, Uganda as Deputy Chief of Mission (2008-10); Nairobi, Kenya as Economic Counselor (2004-08); Shanghai, China (2000-2004); Taipei, Taiwan (1996-2000); Mbabane, Swaziland (1989-91); and Paris, France (1988-89).
Hoover is the winner of two global State Department awards: The Herbert Salzman Award for Excellence in International Economic Performance (2008), and the Director General’s Award for Reporting (co-winner, 1998). He is the winner of several Superior Honor Awards and received a Presidential Rank Award in 2019. Prior to his Foreign Service career, Hoover worked as an investment banker in New York and Tokyo, and as an English teacher in Japan. He is a 1982 magna cum laude graduate of Princeton University and a native of Acton, Massachusetts. He is married to Kathyrine Lin Hoover, a teacher. They are the proud parents of two adult sons.