Judith Beth Cefkin (61) is to become the next United States Ambassador to Fiji covering Tonga, Kiribati, Tuvalu and Nauru.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved her nomination on September 18. If confirmed by the full Senate, it would be her first ambassadorial posting for the career foreign office.

From Fort Collins in Colorado, she graduated with a B.A in government from Smith College in 1975 before receiving her M.S in International Relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1977.

She joined the State Department in 1983 and her first assignment was vice-consul at the U.S Embassy in Mexico City. She then took up various postings that included being a regional affairs officer at the Bureau of Political Military Affairs at the Department of State and desk officer for Rwanda, Burundi and the Central African Republic.

From 1990, she was assigned to the US Embassy in Bangkok and Manila. She was sent to Sarajevo as deputy chief of mission to the U.S Embassy in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2006.

Since 2013, she was the senior advisor for Burma (Myanmar) and spent much of the time working on normalising relations between the United States and that nation, travelling there as part of that effort.

Once confirmed, Cefkin will replace Ambassador Frankie Reed who took up the post in October 2011.