Prior to her appointment as Ambassador to Cyprus, Julie Fisher served as the Special Envoy for Belarus based in Vilnius, Lithuania. In 2020, she was confirmed as the first U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Belarus since 2008. Fisher previously served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Western Europe and the European Union in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs and as Deputy Permanent Representative of the U.S. Mission to NATO. Earlier, she was the Chief of Staff to the Deputy Secretary of State for Management and Resources, and the Director of the State Department’s Operations Center. Other assignments include a detail to NATO’s international staff as Deputy Director of the Private Office and assignments at U.S. embassies in Georgia, Ukraine, and Russia, as well as tours at the National Security Council, the bureaus for European and Eurasian Affairs and Near Eastern Affairs, and the Secretary of State’s Executive Secretariat Staff. Fisher is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service and has received numerous awards including a Presidential Rank Award. Fisher earned a Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Master’s degree from the School of International and Public Affairs at Princeton University. She speaks Russian and French.