Steven H. Kraft
Chargé d’Affaires a.i., U.S. Embassy Luxembourg

Steven H. Kraft is a career Foreign Service Officer who joined the Department of State in 1991.  He assumed duties as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at the U.S. Embassy in Luxembourg in June 2009.  Mr. Kraft served as Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) at the Embassy since August 2006.  From October 2003 until July 2006, he served as DCM and Chargé d'Affaires at the U. S. Embassy in Bamako, Mali.  Mr. Kraft has also been posted to Azerbaijan, Australia, and Sri Lanka, and served in Afghanistan during Operation Enduring Freedom.  
     
In Azerbaijan from 1992-1994, Mr. Kraft was the first Consular Officer and General Services Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baku.  Following that assignment, he served as the Administrative Officer at the U.S. Consulate General in Melbourne until 1996, and then as a Political Officer at the American Embassy in Colombo.  During the latter assignment, Mr. Kraft worked for extended periods as the Embassy’s Public Affairs Officer and Acting Head of the U.S. Information Service office.

After returning to Washington, DC in 1999, Mr. Kraft held a number of positions at the Department of State.  He served in the Executive Secretariat, as Desk Officer for India and Bhutan focusing on Economic and Commercial Affairs, and as the Desk Officer for Zimbabwe and Botswana.  In 2002, Mr. Kraft was the first U.S. diplomat to serve outside of Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, after the fall of the Taliban regime.  For several months during that period, he lived and worked with U.S. Army Civil Affairs and Special Forces units in Herat in the western part of the country.

Prior to being commissioned in the Foreign Service, Steve Kraft worked for five years in the Department of Defense, first, as a Personnel Management Specialist in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, and then as an Intelligence Analyst with the Office of Naval Intelligence.  In the latter capacity, he served as the senior civilian Intelligence Advisor during a U.S. Naval operation in the Pacific.

Mr. Kraft holds a B.A. in Political Science from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a M.A. in Soviet Studies from the University of Essex in England.  He has studied several languages including French, German, Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Sinhala.  Mr. Kraft is the recipient of several Superior Honor and Meritorious Honor Awards.

Mr. Kraft is married and has two children.