Ambassador Gerald Wesley Scott is a retired career member of the Senior Foreign Service. He joined the Dept. of State in 1969 and was posted to the Consulate General in Tangier and then to Gabon. He then served as a staff assistant to the Asst. Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs and in 1973 was posted to Da Nang, Republic of Viet Nam. After the fall of Viet Nam, he worked dealing with refugees, and then was briefly posted to the Republic of China office. He then served as desk officer for Somalia during much of the Somali-Ethiopian conflict.

In 1979 he served at the Consulate in Genoa, and thence to the political section of the Embassy in Rome. From 1983 – 85 he was responsible for the Africa portfolio in the political section of the US Mission to the UN in New York. He then served in Swaziland for three years as Deputy Chief of Mission, and as Political Counselor in Zaire from 1988 to 1992. He then served briefly as Political Counselor in Kenya, and returned to Zaire as Deputy Chief of Mission in 1993. He next served as Ambassador to the Gambia, from 1996 to 1998, immediately following a coup d’etat. His last two years of full service were as State Department representative and faculty member of the Naval War College.