Alaina B. Teplitz

Alaina B. Teplitz is a diplomat and United States Ambassador to Nepal. She was nominated by President Obama on March 26, 2015 and confirmed by the Senate August 5, 2015.

Teplitz is the daughter of Marsha Neece (Freeman), a retired CPA and Jack Teplitz, a lawyer and developer. She graduated from New Trier High School in Winnetka, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. She is 1/2 Jewish. Teplitz earned a B.A. from Georgetown University.

Teplitz joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1991. Her initial assignments included ones at the State Department’s Bureau of Administration, as well as international ones in Australia, Albania, and Mongolia. She was a Program Analyst at the Center for Administrative Innovation from 2001 to 2002, and from 2002 to 2004 she was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her next assignment was as Deputy Director of Joint Administrative Services in Belgium from 2004 to 2007. She then returned to the U.S. as Director of Management Tradecraft Training at the Foreign Service Institute, followed by an assignment with the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs.

She then accepted another international assignment and from 2011 to 2012 became the Management Minister Counselor at the American mission in Afghanistan.

At the time she was nominated by President Obamato become ambassador to Nepal, she was Director of the Office of Management Policy, Rightsizing, and Innovation at the Department of State.

On August 5, 2015 the U.S. Senate confirmed Teplitz to be the next U.S. Ambassador to Nepal, replacing Ambassador Peter W. Bodde. She told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that her goals in the new assignment would be “to strengthen Nepal’s democracy, advance its economic growth and improve its resiliency.” She emphasized the need to rebuild following the country’s major earthquake in April 2015.

On November 4, 2015, Teplitz met with Nepali Congress President and former Prime Minister Sushil Koirala.

Teplitz is married to Robert D. Saul. Teplitz has two sons from her first marriage to Joseph Mellott.