Ambassador (ret) Deborah A. McCarthy is a non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis and at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.

She is an expert on U.S. foreign and national security policy. Most recently, she was the U.S. negotiator to the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on Cybercrime (2022-2025) leading U.S diplomatic efforts with allies and partners which successfully concluded a new global UN Cybercrime Convention. Just prior, she was a Fellow at Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative (2020-2022) focusing on cyber and technology and was the host and producer of the podcast series “The General and the Ambassador”.

In a long diplomatic career, she served as Ambassador to Lithuania (2013-2016), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Economic and Business Affairs, Deputy Chief of Mission in Athens, Greece, Special Coordinator for Venezuela, Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, Consul General in Montreal, Deputy Chief of Mission in Nicaragua and Economic Counselor in Paris. Other postings include Rome, Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Amb. McCarthy is a member of the American College of National Security Leaders and the American Academy of Diplomacy. She is on the Advisory Board of the Masters Program of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and is a Senior Editor for the Harvard Social Impact Review.

Amb. McCarthy holds a M.S. in Foreign Service and a M.A. in Economics from Georgetown University and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Virginia. She is trilingual.