Ambassador Richard Miles entered the U.S. Foreign Service in 1967, and has served abroad in Oslo, Moscow, Belgrade, as consul general in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), and as principal officer of the U.S. Embassy Office in Berlin. He served as ambassador to Azerbaijan from 1992 to 1993, as chief of mission to Belgrade from 1996 to 1999, and as ambassador to Bulgaria from 1999 to 2002.

From 2002 to 2005, Ambassador Miles was the U.S. ambassador to Georgia. He retired from the State Department in August 2005, and in 2006 served as executive director of the Open World Leadership Center, headquartered in the Library of Congress. In November 2008, he was recalled to active duty to serve as chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. He returned to retirement in September 2009.

At the State Department, Ambassador Miles also worked in the Offices for Soviet and East European and Yugoslav Affairs and in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs. He worked for Senator Ernest F. Hollings on an American Political Science Fellowship from 1983 to 1984, and was a fellow at Harvard University’s Center for International Affairs from 1987 to 1988.

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Ambassador Miles served in the Marine Corps from 1954 to 1957, and obtained degrees from Bakersfield College, the University of California, Berkeley, and Indiana University. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Army Russian Institute in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany.

Ambassador Miles has been awarded the State Department’s Meritorious Honor Award and the Group Superior Honor Award. In 1992, he was awarded a Presidential Meritorious Service Award and a national award for reporting. In 2004, he was the recipient of the State Department’s Robert C. Frasure Award for peaceful conflict resolution.