Quick Facts
Biography
Carlos Pascual (born 1959) is a Cuban-American diplomat and the former U.S. Ambassador to Mexico and Ukraine.
Education
Pascual attended Bishop Amat Memorial High School in La Puente California and graduated in 1976. He then earned a B.A. from Stanford University in 1980 and an M.P.P. from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 1982.
Career
Pascual worked for USAID from 1983 to 1995 in Sudan, South Africa and Mozambique, and as Deputy Assistant Administrator for Europe and Eurasia. From July 1998 to January 2000, Pascual served as Special Assistant to the President and NSC Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, and from 1995 to 1998 as Director for the same region, from October 2000 until May 2003, as the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine.
He was then named Assistance Coordinator for Europe and Eurasia. In 2004, he was named Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization at the US Department of State.
Pascual worked as Vice President and Director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program at the Brookings Institution where he presided over the creation of the Brookings Doha Center and the Brookings-Tsinghua Center.
Selected by President Barack Obama as ambassador to Mexico, he was confirmed by the United States Senate on August 7, 2009. He presented his credentials to the Mexican government on August 9, 2009 and personally to President Felipe Calderón on October 21, 2009. Pascual submitted his resignation as Ambassador to Mexico on March 19, 2011 in part due to tensions with Calderón. Tensions with President Calderón arose as a result of the WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables in which Pascual criticized the Mexican military’s ability or willingness to fight the Mexican drug cartels. Pascual is considered to be the first casualty of the Wikileaks affair.
Pascual was appointed the State Department's Special Envoy and Coordinator for International Energy Affairs in May 2011, succeeding David L. Goldwyn.
Pascual serves on the Board of Directors of Centrica, a British multinational electricity and gas utility company.