Ambassador Patrick Duddy is a senior advisor on Global Affairs at Duke University. He also teaches in Duke’s Fuqua School of Business. Before joining the Duke faculty, Ambassador Duddy served as a U.S. diplomat for nearly thirty years. At his retirement from the U.S. Foreign Service he was one of the Department of State’s most senior Latin American specialists with exceptionally broad experience in trade, energy, public affairs and crisis management. From 2007 to 2010 he was the U.S. Ambassador to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for both President Bush and President Obama.

Prior to his assignment to Venezuela, Ambassador Duddy was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (DAS) for the Western Hemisphere. In that capacity he was directly responsible for the Office of Economic Policy and Summit Coordination, which included the hemispheric energy portfolio, as well for the Offices of Brazil/ Southern Cone Affairs and of Caribbean Affairs.

From 2002 until 2005, Ambassador Duddy was the U.S. Consul General in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he was the ranking American official in the world’s fourth largest city and directed the largest U.S. consulate general in the Western Hemisphere. In Sao Paulo, Duddy also served as the senior USG liaison to one of the most dynamic and sophisticated business communities in the world and as a board member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Sao Paulo, the largest American Chamber in the world outside the U.S. In addition, he served as the Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia.

Prior to his assignment in Brazil, Duddy served in a variety of positions around the hemisphere and in Washington including senior positions at the U.S. embassies in Bolivia and Panama. Earlier in his career he also served in U.S. embassies in Paraguay, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic and Chile.