Jimmy J. Kolker

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Jimmy J. Kolker (born 1948) is an American diplomat. He was the ambassador to Burkina Faso from 1999 to 2002 and Uganda from 2002 to 2005.^[1] He was Chief of the HIV/AIDS Section at UNICEF’s New York headquarters from 2007 to 2011. From 2011 to 2017, Ambassador Kolker was Assistant Secretary for Global Affairs, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services in Washington, DC.

Ambassador Kolker was recalled to the State Department in 2021 as senior advisor to the Bureau of Global Health Security and Diplomacy, working part time. Outside of government, he serves on the boards of MANA Nutrition, the G4 Global Surgery Alliance, Building Tomorrow, American Diplomacy Publications and Firelight Foundation. He was (2018-2021) an adjunct assistant professor at Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service Security Studies Program and is a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He is an advisor to Last Mile Health, and to Texas Children's Hospital's Global HOPE pediatric cancer initiative and to the Augusta Victoria Hospital in Jerusalem. He is author of the chapter on "Health and Science Diplomacy" in the textbook "Diplomatic Tradecraft", edited by N, Kralev, published by Cambridge University Press in 2024,

In June, 2019, Ambassador Kolker was the commencement speaker at Carleton College, "How To Be Prepared for the Jobs That Don't Yet Exist". He received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters at the ceremony.