Ambassador Alberto M. Fernandez today assumed the position of Coordinator of the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications (CSCC), which was established in September 2010 to coordinate, orient, and inform government-wide public communications activities directed at audiences abroad and targeted against violent extremists and terrorist organizations, especially al-Qaida, its affiliates, and its adherents.

CSCC is an interagency effort based in the Department of State and operates under the broad policy direction of the White House and an interagency steering committee. Staff is drawn from several U.S. agencies. The Coordinator reports to the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, and works in close collaboration with the Bureau of Counterterrorism (CT), other Department bureaus, and other government agencies, in accordance with Executive Order 13584, signed by President Obama on September 9, 2011.

Alberto M. Fernandez served as U.S. Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea from January 2010 to March 2012. He previously served as U.S. Chargé d’affaires to the Republic of Sudan from June 2007 to May 2009; Director for Near East Public Diplomacy (2005-2007); Director for Iraq Public Diplomacy (2004-2005) and in senior public diplomacy positions at the U.S. embassies in Afghanistan, Jordan, Syria and Guatemala.

Ambassador Fernandez also served as a Foreign Service Officer in Iraq, Kuwait, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic, and the United Arab Emirates, and as U.S. Information Agency Desk Officer for Egypt, Yemen and Sudan. He is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service with the rank of Minister-Counselor.

A graduate of the University of Arizona and the Defense Language Institute, Ambassador Fernandez served in the U.S. Army from 1976 to 1979, and came to the United States as a refugee from Cuba in 1959. Mr. Fernandez speaks fluent Spanish and Arabic.