Ambassador Julie Chung is the Vice President of Strategy and Global Affairs at ISC2, the world’s leading cybersecurity consortium and standard bearer for cybersecurity certifications and professional networks. She is also a Senior Advisor at the Krach Institute for Tech Diplomacy at Purdue and a member of its Advisory Council. She serves as a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Indo- Pacific Security Initiative of the Scrowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and is a member of the Vandenberg Coalition’s Advisory Board.
An experienced American diplomat and senior leader on key foreign policy and national security challenges across the Indo-Pacific and Latin America for three decades, she was most recently U.S. Ambassador to Sri Lanka from 2022-2026, strengthening maritime security, infrastructure, and cybersecurity partnerships in close coordination with Quad partners. She served as Acting Assistant Secretary and Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs from 2019-2021. Prior to that, she was director of the Office of Japanese Affairs expanding bilateral investment and trade. She traveled to North Korea numerous times during 2001-2003 as a member of the Korean Economic Development Organization negotiations with North Korea. She also served as Special Assistant on Asia to Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage. Her other postings include Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Japan, China, Colombia, and Iraq as Chief of Staff for the coordination of civilian-military foreign assistance.
Chung holds a B.A. from the University of California San Diego and an M.A. from Columbia University. She joined the State Department in the first cohort of the Thomas Pickering Fellowship and is the recipient of the Presidential Rank Award for leading repatriation efforts of American citizens during Covid and the State Department’s Distinguished Honor Award.
