New arrivals
Ermal Muça
Ambassador of Albania
Ermal Muça joined Albania’s foreign service in 2002. Since then, he has held different positions at the Albanian foreign ministry. He worked in the regional bilateral relations department at headquarters and did a posting abroad, as deputy head of mission in Turkey. He was also consul general in Istanbul.
Recently, he served as director of state protocol at the foreign ministry.
The ambassador studied international relations at the University of Istanbul, completing a bachelor’s and a master’s degree. He also studied diplomacy at the foreign ministry and attended the Albanian National Institute of Public Administration.
Muca is married to Alma Muça and they have three children. He speaks Albanian, English, Turkish and Italian.
Marcelo Gabriel Suárez Salvia
Ambassador of Argentina
Ambassador Suárez Salvia joined the foreign service in 1988 and worked in the privatization secretariat at the ministry of economy and public works in 1992. He worked as a consultant in the minister’s office in 1994 and then joined the minister’s office at international trade.
From 2003 to 2008, he was posted to the permanent mission to the United Nations as counsellor. Between 2009 and 2012, he was director for multilateral co-operation at the directorate-general for international co-operation. He became consul general in Chicago in 2012 until just before coming to Canada.
Suárez Salvia is married to Lucia Borjas de Suárez Salvia and they have four children. He studied law at university and then completed studies at the National Foreign Service Institute between 1995 and 1996. He speaks Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese and some French.
Alejandro Marisio
Ambassador of Chile
Ambassador Marisio began his career by working for the ministry of education for two years, after which he began studies in diplomacy. He began his diplomatic career as a third secretary in 1985.
His first posting was to the former Yugoslavia in 1988, where he stayed until 1992. He returned to headquarters to co-ordinate the Second Space Conference of the Americas between 1993 and 1995, after which he was posted to the Latin American Integration Association in Uruguay until 2000. He was first secretary to the U.S. between 2002 and 2006 and minister-counsellor and general consul in Lima, Peru, from 2009 to 2014. For the past two years, he’s been director general of consular affairs and immigration at headquarters.
The ambassador is married to Maria Cecilia Beretta Delgado and they have three sons and one daughter. He speaks Spanish, English and French.
Pavlos Anastasiades
High Commissioner for Cyprus
High Commissioner Anastasiades is Cyprus’s first resident ambassador to Canada. He is also the permanent representative to Montreal’s International Civil Aviation Organization.
He joined the foreign service in 1991, after several years in the academic world. His previous posting was as ambassador to the United States (1993-1997), with accreditations as high commissioner to Canada and representative of Cyprus to various international organizations. Before going to Washington, he was posted to Sweden (1997-2002) as ambassador, with concurrent accreditations to Norway and Latvia.
His positions at the foreign ministry have included: head of policy planning and internal analysis/information and head of the diplomatic office. He also worked in the EU division at the ministry.
He is married to Maria Antonopoulou; they have one daughter.
Sosthène Ngokila
Ambassador of Gabon
Sosthène Ngokila began his career at the ministry of foreign affairs in 1993, working on the Western Europe desk and was soon appointed as cultural attaché to Gabon’s embassy in Brussels. From 2000 to 2002, he was cultural attaché in Tunisia and later in 2002, he was appointed first secretary to the embassy in Paris, where he stayed for two years.
In 2004, he returned to headquarters at the rank of ambassador with responsibilities for human resources at the foreign ministry, after which he served for four years as the assistant secretary general.
Ngokila is married to Euphrasie (née Mounguengui). His educational experience includes a degree in economics and international relations from the Université de Tunis III, which he completed in 1991. He speaks French, English and Spanish.
Clarissa Sabita Riehl
High Commissioner for Guyana
High Commissioner Riehl comes to diplomacy after careers in law and politics. She was elected to Guyana’s National Assembly in 1992 and remained there until 2011, having done a stint as deputy speaker between 1998 and 2011. She was also the first chairwoman of the parliamentary sectoral committee on foreign relations, a position she held in 2003.
She served as a commissioned second lieutenant in the Women’s Army Corps of Guyana’s Defence Force in 1967 and began her legal career in 1970 as state counsel in the chambers of the director of public prosecution. In 1982, she was appointed a magistrate.
After her political career ended in 2011, she returned to practising law and in 2014, she was appointed notary public for Guyana.
Adbul Kareem Kaab
Ambassador of Iraq
Abdul Kareem Kaab’s career has spanned civil engineering and diplomacy, including two years at the infamous Abu Ghraib Prison, where he was taken for opposing Iraq’s dictatorship during his national military service as a civil engineer. After completing military service in 1989 (with a two-year prison interruption in the middle) he worked in civil engineering until 1996, at which time he immigrated to Germany and applied for political asylum. He then worked briefly and studied Islamic Science before returning to engineering in 2004.
In 2009, his career would take a turn when he returned to Iraq with the rank of ambassador at the foreign ministry. Soon after, he was Iraqi ambassador to Finland (2010-2013) and non-resident ambassador to Estonia (2011-13). He returned to headquarters for three years before being sent to Ottawa.
He is married to Dr. Khaulh AlKoofi and they have four children. He speaks English, German and Arabic.
Shirley Skerritt-Andrew
High Commissioner for St. Kitts and Nevis
High Commissioner Skerritt-Andrew is the first resident high commissioner to serve in her country’s newly opened mission in Canada.
Skerritt-Andrew is an economist and historian by training and has worked in the public sector in the Caribbean as well as the United Kingdom. Her most recent diplomatic posting was to Brussels, between 2008 and 2013, where she served as ambassador to Belgium and the European Union for four Eastern Caribbean States. She was also their non-resident ambassador to Sweden.
As a long-time adviser to the prime minister, she became the main interlocutor for the Global Environment Facility in St. Kitts and Nevis and has worked on alternative energy issues. She’s interested in geo-thermal energy development and biofuels as a bi-product of sugar cane. She hopes to co-operate extensively with Canada on green growth and technology.
Garth Chatoor
High Commissioner for Trinidad and Tobago
High Commissioner Chatoor has a master of science degree in production engineering and management and a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering. He has also completed post-graduate work in management studies, systems analysis and design.
From 2000 to 2011, he served as general manager of the Power Generation Company of Trinidad and Tobago Ltd. (PowerGen), a company created out of the partial divestment of the Trinidad and Tobago Electricity Commission. He has also held several directorships including with RBC Financial Caribbean Ltd., RBC Investment Management, Carib Glass Ltd. and RBC Merchant Bank.
Chatoor is married to Carole Diane Chatoor and they have two children.
Non-heads of mission
Afghanistan
Sayed Jawad Serat
Third Secretary
Argentina
Sebastien Juan Palou
Second Secretary
Australia
Grant Stephen Edwards
Minister-Counsellor
Anthony James Murfett
Minister-Counsellor
Belarus
Dimitry Basik
Counsellor and chargé d’affaires
Brazil
Jefson Borges
Defence an air attaché
Chile
Rafael Reinaldo Rojas Agurto
Attaché
China
Chang Che
Second secretary
Hongwei Cui
Second secretary
Zhiwen Li
Second secretary
Yiren Mao
Attaché
Cuba
Pavel Dominguez Gutierrez
Attaché
Finland
Jarno Mika Kristian Valkeapaa
Counsellor
France
Mathieu Antoine Bernard Schuster
First Secretary
Georgia
Natalia Kordzaia
Minister-counsellor and consul
Ghana
Elizabeth Nyantakyi
Minister-Counsellor
Honduras
Arianna Julihsa Montenegro Sosa
Second Secretary
India
Arun Kumar Sahu
Deputy High Commissioner
Japan
Airi Kuya
Second Secretary
Macedonia
Savo Sibinoski
Deputy head of mission
Mexico
Iker Reyes Godelmann
Minister
Carlos Eduardo Vargas Suarez
Deputy naval attaché
Myanmar
Thanda Hla Myint
Second secretary
New Zealand
Wayne John Morris
Air attaché
Nigeria
Lucy Ocheme
Attaché
Oman
Fahad Sulaiman Khalaf Al Kharusi
Counsellor
Russia
Aleksandr Govorukhin
Attaché
Igor Starkov
Defence Attaché
Saint Kitts And Nevis
Onsley Kervin Lloyd
Counsellor
Senegal
Tamsir Faye
First Counsellor
Sudan
Nura Osman M. Suleiman
First secretary
Ukraine
Yurii Nykytiuk
Minister-counsellor
United Kingdom
Ann Cowan
Second Secretary
Edward Jim Evans
Second Secretary
United States Of America
Daniel Christopher Acker
Second secretary and vice-consul
Elizabeth Moore Aubin
Minister-counsellor and deputy chief of mission
Calvin Griffith Jones
Assistant attaché
Venezuela
Jissette Carolina Abreu Lopez
Second Secretary
