Chargé d’Affaires, a.i.
J.A. Diffily
J.A. Diffily has been Deputy Chief of Mission in Belmopan, Belize since September 2008 and Chargé d’Affaires, a.i. since January 23, 2009.
He is a regular member of the Foreign Service and entered on duty in June 1995. Most recently he was Deputy Chief of Mission in Lome, Togo. He has also served in Washington, Beirut, Lesotho, Mozambique and Northern Mexico.
Before joining the Foreign Service he had a career in marine transportation. He worked for the United States Coast Guard in their polar class icebreaker program in California in the early 1990s. Before that he held various positions in engineering management at a shipyard and an ocean tugboat firm on San Francisco Bay. During this time he led a team which ran ferries to Alcatraz Island National Park. This team also established emergency ferry service across San Francisco Bay after a piece of the Oakland Bay Bridge collapsed in the 1989 earthquake.
Earlier in his career he was a field service engineer on Detroit Diesel and Electro-Motive Division engines for General Motors Overseas. Just out of college, he served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Kenya working to introduce the use of small diesel tractors to rural farmers.
He has an engineering degree from New Jersey Institute of Technology, an MBA from University of California Berkeley, and a Military Technologies Certificate from the Naval War College.
He was born in New Jersey and lived many years in California. He is married to Linda De Sola and they have three children. He and Linda have a home in the Fort Worth, Texas area.