Patrick Duddy

Ambassador Patrick Duddy is the director of Duke University’s Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. He is also a senior advisor to the Offices of Global Affairs and Press and Government Affairs. He has taught in both the Fuqua School of Business and the Sanford School of Public Policy. Before joining the Duke faculty, Ambassador Duddy served as a U.S. diplomat for nearly thirty years. At his retirement from the U.S. Foreign Service, he was one of the Department of State’s most senior Latin American specialists with exceptionally broad experience in trade, energy, public affairs, and crisis management. From 2007 to 2010 he was the U.S. Ambassador to the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for both President Bush and President Obama.

Prior to his assignment to Venezuela, Ambassador Duddy was Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (DAS) for the Western Hemisphere. In that capacity, he was directly responsible for the Office of Economic Policy and Summit Coordination, which included the hemispheric energy portfolio, as well for the Offices of Brazil/ Southern Cone Affairs and of Caribbean Affairs.

From 2002 until 2005, Ambassador Duddy was the U.S. Consul General in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where he was the ranking American official in the world’s fourth-largest city and directed the largest U.S. consulate general in the western hemisphere. In Sao Paulo, Duddy also served as the senior USG liaison to one of the most dynamic and sophisticated business communities in the world and as a board member of the American Chamber of Commerce in Sao Paulo, the largest American Chamber in the world outside the U.S. In addition, he served as the Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia.

Prior to his assignment in Brazil, Duddy served in a variety of positions around the hemisphere and in Washington including senior positions at the U.S. embassies in Bolivia and Panama. Earlier in his career, he also served in U.S. embassies in Paraguay, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and Chile.

Duddy served as U.S. head of delegation to international conferences on counter-narcotics, energy, and assistance for Haiti. He has spoken to a wide range of private sector groups, world affairs councils, NGOs, and universities both in the United States and in Latin America. He has taught at the National War College in Washington, D.C., and lectured at the Foreign Service Institute of the Department of State. He has written for the Council on Foreign Relations’ Center for Preventive Action and published op-ed columns on U.S. foreign and trade policy in English, Spanish and Portuguese. He has been interviewed by NPR, the BBC, Deutsche Welle, the Voice of America, ABC Australia, and CTV Canada among many others. Duddy is the recipient of the Secretary of State’s Career Achievement Award and a Presidential Meritorious Service Award. In May of 2012, he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Public Service degree by Husson University. He speaks Spanish and Portuguese. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Educated at Colby College (BA), Northeastern University (MA), and the National War College (MS), he is married to Mary Huband Duddy. They have two children, Sarah and Robert.