Press Releases 2003

December 17, 2002

Presentation of Credentials by U.S. Ambassador

Linda E. Watt arrived in Panama on December 13, 2002 to assume her duties as United States Ambassador to the Republic of Panama. Ambassador Watt is a career member of the Foreign Service, with the rank of Minister-Counselor. Prior to her nomination by President George W. Bush on June 27, 2002, she served as Foreign Policy Advisor at U.S. Southern Command in Miami, an assignment she took up in July of 2001.

Entering the Foreign Service in 1976, Ambassador Watt has served in Managua, London, San Jose, Quito, and Moscow. Her most recent overseas assignment was as Deputy Chief of Mission / Chargéd Affaires in Santo Domingo from 1997-2000. She also served in Washington in the Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asia Affairs and the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs.

Ambassador Watt was born in Tokyo, Japan and grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. She graduated from Vanderbilt University in 1973 with a double major in history and Spanish, and received a Master of Arts degree in Latin American Studies from the University of New Mexico in 1975. She was a member of the State Department's Senior Seminar, the U. S. government's highest-level executive development program for foreign affairs and national security officials, from August 2000 to June 2001. She was a fellow of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Seminar XXI (Foreign Politics, International Relations, and the National Interest) in 1996-1997.

Ambassador Watt is married to Leo Duncan, a retired U.S. Foreign Service information management officer. She has two children, Thomas Crosby, on active duty in the U.S. Air Force, and Laurie Crosby, a criminal justice major at Florida International University in Miami.