Alexander M. Laskaris

Alexander Mark Laskaris is an American diplomat who served as United States Ambassador to Guinea from 2012 to 2015. Currently, Laskaris serves as Faculty Leader in the National War College at the National Defense University.

Before joining the Foreign Service, Laskaris was an english and maths teacher at St Boniface High School in Galeshewe, Northern Cape in South Africa.

Laskaris joined the Foreign Service in 1991 and was first posted to Monrovia, Liberia as vice-consul, during the ongoing civil war. In 1993, Laskaris was posted to Gaborone, Botswana as political and economic officer, staying there for two years before serving as desk officer for Rwanda and Burundi. In 1997, Laskaris was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Luanda, Angola to be a political counselor.

In 1999, Laskaris was recalled to work at the State Department, first as an advisor on the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, working under Richard Holbrooke, and then, in 2001, as part of Secretary of State Colin Powell's Policy Planning Staff.

Laskaris returned to Africa in 2003 to be deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Bujumbura, Burundi and in 2006, took up the same post in Pristina, Kosovo, serving there during the international talks led by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari.

In 2008, Laskaris was appointed team leader for the Ninewa Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq. From the summer of 2009 until his next appointment in 2010, Laskaris took a course in Kurdish. In 2010 he was given the job of consul general in the consulate in Erbil, Iraq.

Laskaris stayed in Iraq until his nomination for the U.S. Ambassador to Guinea by President Obama on May 24, 2012. He was appointed to the post on August 3, 2012, presented his credentials in September 2012 and left the post on November 10, 2015.

In January 2016, Laskaris joined the U.S. Africa Command as deputy to the Commander, Thomas D. Waldhauser. In July 2019, he began leading seminars at the National War College as a faculty member.

Laskaris has neither a partner nor any children. He can speak French, Albanian, Greek, Spanish, Kurdish, Soussou and Portuguese.