Mr. Mark A. Schapiro

Foreign Policy Advisor
U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa

Mark A. Schapiro, career member of the United States Senior Foreign Service, began serving as Foreign Policy Advisor to the Commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa on September 1, 2020.  Prior to arriving in Naples, Mark served two years as Chargé d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Malta, after working as Director for Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus at the National Security Council from 2015-2016.  Much of his career has focused on the Middle East, North Africa, and Southern Europe.

Mark has completed overseas tours in Damascus, Rome, Baghdad, Algiers, Mosul, Lyon, and Malta, in addition to advanced Arabic language training in Tunis, Tunisia. He returned to Baghdad in the spring of 2007 as part of the Joint Strategic Assessment Team commissioned by Ambassador Ryan Crocker and General David Petraeus.  Under his leadership as U.S. Consul in Lyon, France, the Consulate became the first U.S. diplomatic mission in the world to integrate American electric vehicles into its official fleet, through an innovative partnership with Chevrolet and the U.S. Foreign Commercial Service.  Before serving from 2014-15 as Senior Turkey Desk Officer at the State Department in Washington, DC, he completed a Congressional Pearson Fellowship covering the Middle East and North Africa for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Mark has received multiple U.S. Department of State Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards, the Commander’s Award for Public Service from General David Petraeus (2007) and the Superior Civilian Service Award from U.S. Army 3ID Commander MG Anthony Cucolo (2010).  A native of New York City, Mark has an undergraduate degree from Brown University, a graduate degree with Distinction from the London School of Economics, and most recently was a 2017 Distinguished Graduate of the National War College, where he received the Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens Award for Excellence in Strategic Writing.  He has self-published “Authorized Departure,” a book on the U.S. diplomatic experience in Iraq.

Mark speaks Arabic, French, and Italian.