ECONOMIC SECTION

Michael Sessums joined the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw as Economic Counselor on July 30, 2008.  Before his arrival, he worked for four years at the State Department in Washington in a variety of assignments related to Poland, including two years as Poland Desk Officer in the State Department’s Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs.  Mr. Sessums first experienced Central Europe professionally as the Economic Officer in the U.S. Embassy in Vilnius, Lithuania (2001-2003).  He has also served in other postings in Washington and in Cape Town, South Africa. 

Mr. Sessums studied Political Science and German Studies at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, receiving his Bachelor of Arts in 1991.  He spent nearly four years in the early 1990s on the legislative staff of U.S. Senator Bob Graham of Florida.  In the mid 1990s, he studied American Foreign Policy and International Economics at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies’ in Bologna, Italy and Washington, DC, where he passed his final oral exams “with distinction”.  Mr. Sessums also graduated at the top of his class from the U.S. Foreign Service Institute’s year-long Economic and Commercial Studies program.  

Michael Sessums was born in Tampa, Florida.  He speaks Polish, Lithuanian, German, Spanish, and Italian with varying degrees of proficiency.  He and his wife Jenifer have three children: Nicholas, aged 7, and twins Beck and Olivia, aged 5.