Speakers

Hans Wechsel

Hans Wechsel is the Foreign Policy Advisor to the Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), based at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida.  A career diplomat and member of the Senior Foreign Service, Mr. Wechsel previously served as the Counterterrorism Director for South and Central Asia (July 2022 - August 2020).  Prior assignments in Washington include Director for South and Central Asia in the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor.  He has also served in acting capacities as Deputy Counterterrorism Coordinator and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Rights.

Mr. Wechsel’s most recent overseas assignment was at Embassy Beirut from 2018 to 2020, where he was the Political and Economic Counselor and acting Deputy Chief of Mission during Lebanon’s unprecedented political protests and economic collapse.  Prior to serving in Beirut, he was Coordinating Director at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul, where he led the Embassy’s interagency coordination and international community engagement on civilian assistance programs.  In a previous Kabul assignment, he served as the Deputy Political Counselor, which included leadership of the Embassy task force monitoring the 2014 election.  From 2010 to 2012, he was the State Department’s Iran Watcher in Turkey, where he engaged Iranian dissidents and reported on political and economic developments in Iran.  As the first Regional Director of the Middle East Partnership Initiative from 2004 to 2008, he was based in Abu Dhabi and developed assistance programs for nascent civil society organizations and reform advocates in seven Arabian Peninsula countries and Jordan.  His initial overseas assignments were in Brussels, as a political officer, and in Accra, as an economic and consular officer.

Mr. Wechsel holds a master's degree in Public Policy from Princeton University and a bachelor's degree in Secondary Education from Montana State University.  He has received numerous Superior Honor Awards and was a finalist for the Director General’s Award for Impact and Originality in Reporting.