Dame Karen Pierce

Karen Pierce joined the Foreign Office in 1981 and developed a career spanning security policy, the Balkans, Afghanistan, and the United Nations. She had already worked in Washington as the ambassador's private secretary in the early 1990s before becoming ambassador to Afghanistan and Britain's permanent representative at the UN in New York. ¹

As ambassador in Washington from March 2020 to February 2025, Pierce publicly explained Britain's response to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the growing use of coordinated sanctions. In July 2023 she set out the results of the first UK–US strategic sanctions dialogue, including work on enforcement, export controls, and protecting humanitarian activity from unintended restrictions. After Washington, she became Britain's special envoy to the Western Balkans in March 2025; the government renewed the appointment in June 2026. ^{2, 1}