Heather Byrnes is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service. Before coming to Uzbekistan, Heather served for four years as Regional Senior Commercial Officer for Eurasia, based in the U.S. Embassy in Ankara. In that role, Heather managed Commerce’s five offices in Ukraine, Türkiye and Kazakhstan as well as partner post commercial activities in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Heather’s previous overseas assignments have been as Counselor for Commercial Affairs in the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Principal Commercial Officer in the U.S. Consulate in St. Petersburg, Senior Commercial Officer in the U.S. Embassy in Accra and Commercial Officer in the U.S. Consulate in Johannesburg.

Born and raised in Alaska, Heather was a Rhodes Scholarship finalist and received a B.A., cum laude, from Georgetown University. She was a Fulbright Scholar and Lois P. Roth Fellow in Public Administration at the University of Tampere, Finland. A former AFS Exchange Student in Lapland, Heather speaks fluent Finnish, Russian and Turkish and has recently begun learning Uzbek.

Heather and her husband Michael have three children as well as a rescue dog adopted in Türkiye.