Jeanine E. Jackson

Jeanine E. Jackson (born 1949) is an American diplomat. She was the ambassador to Burkina Faso from 2006 to 2009 and to the Republic of Malawi from 2011 to 2014.

Life

Jeanine Jackson was born in Wyoming. She is of European descent, and graduated from Hastings College with a BA in Art Education in 1971, and the Florida Institute of Technology with an MBA.

Career

Prior to entering the U.S. Foreign Service, Jackson worked in Saigon, Vietnam, as a civil service employee at the Defense Attaché Office. She also served for 10 years as an active duty U.S. Army officer as a colonel, and served primarily in West Germany and South Korea, before retiring and joining the reserves. She joined the Foreign Service in 1985, and saw prominent roles such as Post Management Officer to the USSR (1991), Personnel Officer to Hong Kong (1997), Supervisory General Services Officer to Kenya (1998), Deputy Chief of Mission to Afghanistan (2001–2003), Coordinator for Iraq Transition (2004–2006), amidst others. As Minister Counselor for Management at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, she supported the transition from a military-oriented U.S. presence to a more civilian one. In that role she found it necessary to deal with funding shortages and uncertainty. Jackson retired as a colonel from the Army reserve in 2006. She was appointed as United States Ambassador to Burkina Faso by George W. Bush in 2006, where she achieved a bilateral agreement with the state that enabled U.S. Special Operations Command to regularize and accelerate its counter-terrorism work against Al Qaeda in that region, and remained in that post until 2009.