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Donald Jacobson  joined the Foreign Service in 1992.  His overseas assignments have included: Ciudad Juarez, Mexico (1993-95); Seoul, Korea (1995-97); Bogotá, Colombia (1997-99), and Guadalajara, Mexico (1999-2002), and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (2008-09).  Under his leadership, the Bogotá Non-Immigrant Visa (NIV) Unit earned a Hammer Award for pioneering the use of bar coding in the visa process.  He returned to Washington in 2002 to serve as a Career Development Officer (2002-04) in the Bureau of Human Resources and then as a Management Analyst in the Consular Affairs Bureau’s Executive Office. He served as Director of the Consular Training Division at the Department of State's Foreign Service Institute from 2006 to 2008 and is now Consul General at the U.S. Embassy Riyadh.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Mr. Jacobson served as Director of the American Medical Center-Moscow (1991-92) and Managing Editor for the American Chamber of Commerce in Korea (1989-1991).

Mr. Jacobson received a B.A. in International Relations from the Johns Hopkins University in 1987 and an M.A. in Latin American Studies and International Economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in 1989.  He and his wife, Eugenia, have three children: Andrew, Isabel, and Daniel.  In his spare time he runs the leadership development website GovLeaders.org (www.govleaders.org), which he founded in 2002.