Tracey Jacobson is a distinguished American diplomat and a retired career member of the United States Senior Foreign Service who served for more than three decades with the U.S. Department of State. Throughout her career, Ambassador Jacobson held senior diplomatic and leadership positions across Europe, Asia, Africa, and Washington, D.C., advancing U.S. foreign policy, international cooperation, and global security initiatives.

Ambassador Jacobson’s overseas leadership experience includes serving as U.S. Ambassador to Turkmenistan (2003–06), U.S. Ambassador to Tajikistan (2006–09), and U.S. Ambassador to Kosovo (2012–15). She also served as Chargé d’Affaires, ad interim, at the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (2022–23), and as Chargé d’Affaires, ad interim, at the U.S. Embassy in Dhaka, Bangladesh (2025). Earlier in her career, she served in Seoul, Moscow, Nassau, and Riga.

In Washington, Ambassador Jacobson held several senior leadership positions, including Acting Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs (2017), Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, and Deputy Executive Secretary at the National Security Council at the White House, where she helped coordinate foreign policy initiatives for the National Security Advisor and the President. She also served in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, the Office of the Under Secretary for Management, and as Deputy Director of the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute.

Following her retirement from the Foreign Service in 2017, Ambassador Jacobson returned to public service in 2021 and served in senior positions in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs and Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in addition to the overseas assignments noted above.

Ambassador Jacobson received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the Johns Hopkins University and her Master of Arts degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). She has studied Arabic, Albanian, Serbian, French, Russian, Spanish, Korean, and Tajiki.

She is married to David Baugh, a retired member of the British Diplomatic Service.