Jonathan Addleton

Who is Jonathan Addleton?

Jonathan Addleton is an American author and diplomat. He served as the 8th U.S. Ambassador to Mongolia from 2009 to 2012.

Addleton was born in 1957 in Pakistan, the son of Baptist missionaries from rural Georgia. He spent his early years with his parents in Upper Sind then attended the Murree Christian School, located at an old British Himalayan hill station near the tiny crossroads town of Jhika Gali in the Murree hills of Rawalpindi District, Punjab province.

He went on to attend college at Northwestern University, where he received his bachelor’s in journalism. He later earned his MA and PhD from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. As an undergraduate he was an intern and then a reporter at The Macon Telegraph. He worked briefly at the World Bank and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, before joining the Foreign Service in 1984. His first assignments were as USAID Program Officer in Jordan, Kazakhstan, South Africa, and Yemen.

From 2001-2004 Addleton as USAID mission director in Mongolia. He then headed the USAID missions in Cambodia and Pakistan.