Mr. Paul Narain was the senior career diplomatic aide to the Secretary of State as Executive Assistant to Secretaries Blinken and Rubio from July 2023 to January 2025. A Minister-Counselor in the Senior Foreign Service, Mr. Narain previously served as U.S. Consul General to Northern Ireland and, briefly, as Chargé d'affaires to Estonia. Prior to that, he served as U.S. Embassy Stockholm’s acting Deputy Chief of Mission/Political-Economic Counselor, Embassy Islamabad’s Deputy Political Counselor, and Embassy Athens’ Deputy Economic Counselor. He was also posted to Azerbaijan as a Political Officer and twice to India, once as a Political Officer and, before that, as a Public Diplomacy and Consular Officer. In Washington, Mr. Narain served as a Watch Officer in the Department’s Operations Center and on the Executive Secretariat Staffs of Secretaries Rice and Clinton. Mr. Narain is a recipient of the Secretary’s Distinguished Honor Award, the James Clement Dunn Award for Excellence, the Matilda Sinclaire Award for Hard Language Study (Greek), as well as several Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards across his 23-year career.
Mr. Narain graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Johns Hopkins University (international relations) in 1998 and earned a master’s degree (conflict negotiation; monetary theory) from Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy in 2001. He was a National Security Affairs Fellow at the Hoover Institution/Stanford University from 2016 to 2017. In 2023, he received an honorary doctorate from Queen’s University Belfast (UK) for distinction in public service. Mr. Narain grew up in New York City. Forty years later, riding the subway is still his favorite way to get around!