The United States Senate confirmed Dominican-born Julissa Reynoso Pantaleón as the new US ambassador to Spain and Andorra. The senators voted in a session that ran after midnight on Friday-Saturday, 17-18 December. Reynoso is confirmed together with 41 other ambassadors US President Joe Biden had nominated to ambassador posts. In the same session, the US ambassadors to the European Union, France and Japan were approved.
Reynoso has been serving as an advisor to US President Joe Biden, and chief of staff to First Lady Jill Biden. Reynoso was also acting as the co-chair of the White House Council on Gender Policy.
This will be Reynoso’s second ambassador appointment. Previously she had served as US ambassador in Uruguay. She also served as undersecretary of state in the Office of Western Hemisphere Affairs.
Reynoso migrated to the United States with her family in 1982. In the US she attended high school and then graduated in government from Harvard University in 1997. Wikipedia explains that Reynoso was named the John Harvard Scholar and would later earn a Master of Philosophy in development studies in 1998 from Emmanuel College, Cambridge in the United Kingdom. She also earned a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School in 2001.
As reported in Vox, the last-minute rush of confirmations on Friday — the last day of the Senate’s 2021 session — was an effort to work through a backlog of about 150 presidential nominees. Vox reports that many diplomatic and national security posts remain open thanks to stonewalling from Senate Republicans and the slow pace of nominations from the Biden administration.
20 December 2021