President Joe Biden announced his initial docket of ambassador-level nominations on Tuesday, including famed pilot C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger III to serve as the U.S. representative on the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Sullenberger, who in 2009 famously piloted U.S. Airways flight 1549 to a crash landing in the Hudson River near New York City after a flock of geese collided with the plane, endorsed Biden in the 2020 election against former President Donald Trump.
Biden’s eight other nominations announced Tuesday include:
— Former Deputy Secretary of State Tom Nides as ambassador to the state of Israel
— Former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar as ambassador to the United Mexican States
— Julianne Smith, currently a senior adviser to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, as permanent representative on the Council of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization
— Marc Ostfield, the State Department ombudsman, as ambassador to the Republic of Paraguay
— State Department Director of the Office of West African Affairs Troy Fitrell as ambassador to the Republic of Guinea
— USAID mission director for Accra, Ghana, Sharon Cromer as ambassador to the Republic of Gambia
— Julie Chung, the acting assistant secretary of the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, as ambassador to the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka
— Cynthia Ann Telles, an UCLA psychiatry professor, to be ambassador to Costa Rica
Both Nides’s and Salazar’s nominations had been previously reported in April.
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The White House did not return a reporter’s inquiries on Biden’s remaining ambassador vacancies by press time.
