Gautam Rana, Class of 1997, has been nominated to serve as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to the Slovak Republic.
Rana’s nomination was announced by the White House May 25.
Rana is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Counselor. He currently serves as the deputy chief of mission of the U.S. Embassy in Algeria, where he was the chargé d’affaires ad interim from August 2020 to February 2022.
Before his assignment in Algeria, Rana was the deputy chief of mission and chargé d’affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Among other positions, Rana has served as director for Afghanistan and Pakistan on the National Security Council staff and as the deputy minister counselor for political affairs at the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. He also served as the special assistant to the deputy secretary of state, special assistant to the assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs, and worked in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates.
Before earning his law degree at Vanderbilt, Rana earned B.A. and B.S. degrees from the University of Pennsylvania. He also holds an M.A. from the National Defense University. He speaks Hindi, Spanish and Gujarati.