 Dr. Cindy L. Courville | Dr. Cindy L. Courville is the U.S. Ambassador to the African Union. Prior to her appointment she served as the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council where she developed and coordinated United States policy engagement with Africa. She is responsible for the formulation, coordination, and implementation of policies related to South Africa, Botswana, Angola, Malawi, Mozambique, and Zimbabwe, and military and security issues related to southern Africa. |
In her career at DIA, she also served the Deputy Assistant Defense Intelligence Office for Africa Policy as a liaison to the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Africa, the National Security Council, the Department of State, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Ambassador Courville was also the Director for East African Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense where she was responsible for the coordination of U.S. military and security policy with East Africa and the Horn of Africa. Ambassador Courville previously served as Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council from June 2001 through August 2003.
| Ambassador Courville's professional experience includes ten years in the University arena as a member of the political science faculty at Hanover College in Indiana and Occidental College in Los Angeles. She was an Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Zimbabwe; a Shell Oil Fellow at the University of Denver; and a Ford Minority Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of California at Los Angeles. |  |
After earning her bachelor's and master's degree in political science at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Courville enrolled at DU's (University of Denver) Graduate School of International Studies, where her interest was piqued by the liberation struggle that transformed Rhodesia into Zimbabwe. In 1984, she traveled to Zimbabwe on a fellowship, an opportunity that allowed her to get to know government ministers, white landowners and black laborers. The diversity of her contacts, she says, provided a sense of balance that has characterized her approach to research and analysis.
Courville landed in Washington during the last years of the Clinton administration after a 10-year teaching career that culminated at California's Occidental College. There, she met a guest speaker from the Army War College, who encouraged her international relations students to consider a career with the Defense Department. Courville was intrigued. "I said, 'Well, what about me?'"
That question was answered 18 months later when she went to work for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) as a political/military analyst. At the start of the Bush administration in 2001, she moved to the National Security Council as a director responsible for southern and central Africa. In 2003, she organized President Bush's trip to Africa, accompanying him on its many legs. She then briefly returned to DIA as a team chief responsible for providing a daily compilation of African "all-source" intelligence. The information she collected and synthesized was used on the ground by military attaches and U.S. troops. Occasionally, she even instructed special operations forces on U.S. foreign policy.
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