Graduating from GW (BA ’72) was just the step Ambassador Marisa Lino wanted and needed to begin the career she’d hoped for with the U.S. Foreign Service. Thirty-one years after graduation, Lino has a distinguished and successful career and a resume that reads like a travel book.

“I knew I wanted a job that would let me travel and see the world,” says Lino, currently Senior Advisor for the Political Military Affairs Bureau in Washington, DC. Lino’s assignments took her to Peru, Iraq, Italy, Syria, Pakistan, Albania, and Washington DC, and each assignment, including an ambassador appointment in Albania, let her see “history in the making,” says Lino.

In the late 70s, Lino was stationed in Iraq as an economic and commercial officer just a year after Saddam Hussein came to power and during the Iran-Iraq war. With the pervasiveness of the secret police, “It was difficult to get to know anybody,” says Lino. The regular bombings from the war eventually caused the Department of State to partially evacuate the post, but Lino stayed behind to keep things running and endured six months with little water and no electricity.

Despite the experience in Iraq, Lino considers her two most challenging assignments to be Albania and Pakistan. “You name it, it happened,” she says. She served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Albania while the country experienced a collapse of law and order. She evacuated 900 American citizens and other nationals when conditions in the country became critical in 1997, and she again supervised the evacuation of the post in 1998 in response to direct terrorist threats. In Pakistan, as Counselor of Embassy for Refugee Affairs she took charge of a $60 million refugee program and coordinated the work and budgets of seven NGOs.

Lino now oversees base negotiations with foreign governments, such as the post-September 11th agreement with Uzbekistan, and explores the opportunities for sharing the financial burden of maintaining these overseas bases. Recently, she began leading the effort to form the International Criminal Court as part of her duties.

This year, Lino received the Elliott School Alumni Association’s Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award for her many accomplishments in the field of international affairs just as she retires from her career as a Foreign Service officer. Although she is retiring this year, Lino take on another overseas assignment as Director of the Bologna Center for John Hopkins University’s SAIS program this fall in Italy.