Timothy Pounds is a member of the Senior Foreign Service and currently Deputy Coordinator for Regional Affairs in the Bureau of Counterterrorism. He served three years as the Director in NEA’s Office for Arabian Peninsula Affairs. Before that he was Director of the Egypt Office and Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon. From 2013-2016, he served as DCM in Manama, Bahrain. He was Consul General in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, and Kirkuk, Iraq. He served in Turkey, Peru, and Syria as a Political Officer. Domestically, Mr. Pounds worked as the Lebanon desk officer and then as senior Egypt desk officer before serving in Iraq in 2004. Between 2004 and 2005, he was the Director for Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and North Africa at the National Security Council in Washington, DC. He studied Arabic at the Foreign Service Institute in Washington and Tunis (2005-2007). He speaks Arabic, German, Spanish, and Turkish.
He holds a BA in History and Political Science from the University of Iowa and an MA in Public Administration from the University Of Maryland School Of Public Affairs.