Press Releases 2008

BETH PAYNE TAKES OVER AS NEW U.S. CONSUL GENERAL IN KOLKATA

August 4, 2008

KOLKATA -- Ms. Beth A. Payne took up her assignment as U.S. Consul General in Kolkata on August 1.  She is a career Foreign Service Officer who has previously been posted to U.S. Embassies in Senegal, Rwanda, Israel and Kuwait. In 2003, she opened the office of the U.S. Consul in Baghdad, Iraq. She also served in the office of Children's Issues in the Department of State in Washington, D.C.

She succeeds Mr. Henry V. Jardine, who recently left Kolkata in order to take up his next assignment in Washington after a three-year stay here.

Ms. Payne learned a lot about life and culture in India from an Indian student who studied with her in University in the 1980s and who became a close friend. Since then she has always wanted to live in India. She visited India for a few days in 1994 and is very impressed by the economic growth and positive changes since then. “The economic development in India since my last visit has been very dramatic,” said Ms. Payne.  She is very excited to be living in Kolkata and representing the U.S. Government in eastern India.

In 2003, Ms. Payne received the State Department’s Award for Heroism for saving the arm of a fellow Foreign Service Officer after a hotel bombing in Baghdad.  She was also named the State Department’s Consular Officer of the Year in 2004 in recognition of her work in Iraq. 

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Ms. Payne worked as a staff attorney for the National District Attorneys Association's National Center for the Prosecution of Child Abuse.  Ms. Payne is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Tunisia, where she taught special education in the desert town of Kebili. 

Ms. Payne received an M.S. in National Security Studies from the National War College in 2008; a J.D. from American University in 1988; and a B.S. in Special Education from Pennsylvania State University in 1985. She is a native of Pennsylvania, and speaks fluent French and some Arabic and Hebrew. She is looking forward to studying a bit of Bengali, and has expressed the hope that by so doing she will be able to read some Tagore poems and songs in the original.