The Foreign Service Journal, October 2016

68 OCTOBER 2016 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL AFSA NEWS AFSAGoverning Board Changes AFSA is pleased to welcome three new State representa- tivesto the AFSAGoverning Board. They were confirmed by the board April 6.We also welcome Suzanne Platt, con- firmed on June 1, as the new Foreign Commercial Service representative. Keith Hanigan is direc- tor of the Office of Facility Management in the Overseas Buildings Operations Bureau. Amember of the Foreign Service since 1995, Keith has served in San Salvador, Guate- mala City, Managua, Brasilia, Vienna, Baghdad, London and Kabul, as well as inWashing- ton, D.C. Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Keith worked as an engineer for Turner Construc- tion Company in Boston, as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the Solomon Islands and in the Media and Society Seminars Department at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Keith speaks Spanish and Portuguese—and usually a mixture of both—and is a native of New Jersey. He and his wife, Silvia, have four children and live in Northern Virginia. Kara McDonald currently serves as director of policy, planning and coordination in the Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforce- ment Affairs. She was most recently deputy chief of mis- sion in Chisinau, Moldova. Before joining the U.S. Department of State, she was a Presidential Management Fellow at the U.S. Agency for International Development, where she worked in Kosovo, Haiti, Macedonia and Croatia, and as an elections supervi- sor with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Kara holds a B.A. in French and comparative litera- ture from the University of Michigan and an M.A. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy. She speaks or has studied French, Romanian and Russian. She is married and has two children. Alison Storsve joined the Foreign Service in 2003. She has served eight years overseas and five in domestic assignments, most recently as a program officer covering police development in Haiti in the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforce- ment Affairs. Alison has served as a course facilitator in the Foreign Service Institute’s Political Training Division and a senior watch officer in the department’s Operations Center. She spent five years across three tours covering Afghanistan and Pakistan from the U.S. Mission to NATO in Brussels, Belgium; the Pro- vincial Reconstruction Team in Kunar Province, Afghanistan; and the U.S. consulate in Peshawar, Pakistan. Originally fromOhio, Alison graduated fromOhio State University and is a returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Turk- menistan 2000-2001). Alison will move with her husband and two children to Kosovo in summer 2017 to be the dep- uty of the political-economic section at U.S. Embassy Pristina. Suzanne Platt is a U.S. Foreign Commercial Service officer on her first tour of duty inWashington, D.C., serving on the Nordic-Baltic desk. Previously she worked in the private sector for more than five years, working for a generic pharmaceutical manufacturer. During that time, she set up a U.S. subsid- iary, acted as the company’s agent to the Food and Drug Administration, developed new supply and distribution flows into and within the Euro- pean Union and served as the managing director of a sales marketing subsidiary. A lover of the arts, she has also worked as a freelance lighting and sound technician. She focused on European political economies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Stud- ies, where she received an M.A. in international relations. At the University of Virginia, she earned a B.A. in foreign affairs. We thank outgoing Govern- ing Board members Peter Neisuler, Eric Geeland, Leah Pease and Youqing Ma for their service to AFSA. n COURTESYOFKEITHHANIGAN Keith Hanigan. Kara McDonald. Alison Storsve. Suzanne Platt. COURTESYOFKARAMCDONALD AFSA/GEMMADVORAK AFSA/GEMMADVORAK