Joyce Winchel Namde retired as a Senior Foreign Service Officer in 2018 after 26 years with the State Department. She then worked as a Reemployed Annuitant (REA), as senior advisor in State’s Coronavirus Global Response Coordination Unit, to address the U.S. passport backlog, and to hire consular visa adjudicators to staff our embassies overseas. Her last overseas assignment was Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM), U.S. Embassy in N’Djamena, Chad, where she coordinated U.S. counterterrorism and development programs in Chad and the Central Africa region. She is particularly proud of her leadership efforts to save Chad’s elephants from extinction and to introduce Earth Day in Chad and Equatorial Guinea. Joyce also served as DCM in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, facilitating the strong US-EG ties in the petroleum industry.
As a consular officer, she served in the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Nigeria, Mexico, and Washington. She was also Narcotics Affairs Chief in Haiti and a negotiator for the Bureaus of International Affairs and of Oceans and Environmental Sciences. She speaks Spanish and French. Before her diplomatic career, she was a Fulbright Lecturer at the National Teachers College in Chad, taught Spanish and English as a Second Language to children and adults, ran a refugee resettlement program in Arizona, and trained Peace Corps volunteers in Niger and Chad. She and her husband (also retired from the State Department) now live in North Carolina to be closer to their five grandchildren. She currently serves as Vice Chair and Treasurer for the Carolina Friends of the Foreign Service and Treasurer for the Durham Wildlife Stewards environmental organization.