Roundtable with Heather Variava, Incoming U.S. Consul General in Surabaya, Indonesia

Please join us for a roundtable with Heather Variava. Heather will serve as the U.S. Consul General in Surabaya, Indonesia starting in August 2015.  She will lead the U.S. Consulate General in Surabaya in diplomatic engagement with eastern Indonesia, a region comprising thousands of islands and about a third of Indonesia’s population.  Previously, Ms. Variava served as the Director of the Office of Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Maldives and Bhutan in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs at the U.S. Department of State.  A member of the U.S. Foreign Service since 1996, Ms. Variava has worked overseas in Mumbai, India; Port Louis, Mauritius; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam; and Dhaka, Bangladesh.  In Washington, she also has served at the State Department Operations Center and on the Thailand desk.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Ms. Variava worked as a newspaper reporter in Waterville,  Maine.  Raised in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, she received an undergraduate degree in international relations from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.  She has a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, and, with a Rotary Graduate Scholarship, received a master’s degree in European Studies from the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom.  In 2012, Ms. Variava received a master’s degree in national security strategy from the National War College in Washington, DC, and in 2014 she completed a fellowship in executive leadership with the International Women’s Forum (IWF).  Her husband also works for the State Department, and the couple has two sons.