Alexander M. Laskaris
Alexander Mark Laskaris is an American diplomat who served as the United States ambassador to Chad from August 2022 to February 2025. He also served as the United States ambassador to Guinea from 2012 to 2015. Laskaris was the faculty leader in the National War College at the National Defense University.
Early life and education
Laskaris was born in Monterey, California in 1967. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in international politics from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Master of Strategic Studies from the United States Army War College.Career
Before joining the Foreign Service, Laskaris was an English and math teacher at St. Boniface High School in Galeshewe, Northern Cape in South Africa.Laskaris joined the United States Foreign Service in 1991 and was first posted to Monrovia, Liberia as vice-consul, during the ongoing Civil War. In 1993, Laskaris was posted to Gaborone, Botswana as political and economic officer, staying there for two years before serving as desk officer for Rwanda and Burundi. In 1997, Laskaris was assigned to the U.S. Embassy in Luanda, Angola to serve as a political counselor.
In 1999, Laskaris was recalled to work at the United States Department of State, first as an advisor on the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, working under Richard Holbrooke, and then, in 2001, as part of Secretary of State Colin Powell's Policy Planning Staff.
Laskaris returned to Africa in 2003 to be deputy chief of mission at the embassy in Bujumbura, Burundi and in 2006, took up the same post in Pristina, Kosovo, serving there during the international talks led by UN envoy Martti Ahtisaari.
In 2008, Laskaris was appointed team leader for the Provincial Reconstruction Team in Mosul, Iraq. From the summer of 2009 until his next appointment in 2010, Laskaris took a course in Kurdish. In 2010 he was given the job of consul general in the consulate in Erbil, Iraq.
In January 2016, Laskaris joined the United States Africa Command as deputy to Commander Thomas D. Waldhauser. In July 2019, he began leading seminars at the National War College as a faculty member.