Elena Poptodorova

Early life

Elena Poptodorova was born on August 31, 1951 in Sofia. She holds a degree for English and Italian linguistic and literary studies from Sofia University (1974).

Foreign Ministry service

Elena Poptodorova joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1975 and served from 3rd secretary through minister-counselor in the Secretariat, the State Protocol, the Cabinet of the Minister and the UN and Disarmament Directorates through 1990, when she was elected in the national legislature.

From 1987 to 1990 she was minister-counselor at the Bulgarian embassy in Rome and Bulgaria’s Consul General to the Republic of San Marino.

Prior to her appointment in Washington, Ambassador Elena Poptodorova was Director of the Security Policy Directorate at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a position, which she held for a year since August 1, 2009. In the period 2008 – 2009 she served as Ambassador-at-Large for the Black Sea Region at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Before her first mandate as the Ambassador of Bulgaria to the USA, she served as a spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Director of the Human Rights and International Humanitarian Organizations Directorate.

From 2002 to 2008 she was Bulgaria’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the United States of America, when Bulgaria became a member of NATO and the EU. She was sent second time in the same post in 2010, and remained in the office until May 16, 2016.

Ambassador Poptodorova is fluent in English, Italian, French, Russian, and her native Bulgarian.

Member of the National Parliament

Ms. Poptodorova had a long career as a politician right from the beginning of the changes in Bulgaria in 1989. She was first elected Member of the National Assembly of Bulgaria in the 7th Constituent Assembly from the list of the Bulgarian Socialist Party in 1990, and was a speaker of the Parliamentary group of BSP. She was re-elected in the 36th, 37th and 38th National Parliaments. She served on the committees on foreign policy, national security, radio and TV, human rights, agriculture. She was the Deputy Chair of the Bulgarian delegation to the International Parliamentary Union, member of the national delegations to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), and the Joint Parliamentary Committee ‘Bulgaria-EU’. She also served as Deputy Chair of the Inter-European Parliamentary Forum on Population and Development (IEPFPD).

In the late 1990s, Poptodorova was among the influential members of the Bulgarian Euro-Left.

Education

Elena Poptodorova earned her B.A. and M.A. degrees at the St. Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia in English and Italian linguistic and literary studies, after which she attended a post-graduate course in international relations at the University of National and World Economy in Sofia. She specialized at the University of Leeds, UK and the University of Siena, Italy.

Affiliations

Ambassador Poptodorova is a founding member and member of the Boards of Bulgarian nongovernmental organizations among which:

Since 1995 Elena Poptodorova is Trustee of the Board of Directors of the American University in Bulgaria.

She is also a member of the Washington-based Executive Council on Diplomacy and Women’s Foreign Policy Group.

Ambassador Poptodorova is Doctor Honoris Causa of the Assumption College, Worcester, USA.

Awards and honors

Personal life

In September 2016 she is appointed as head of the Central European office of AJC - a position she stepped down from on 1 March 2017 for "personal reasons".

On 28 February 2017, some media outlets in Bulgaria spread the news that Elena Poptodorova has been detained at the airport in Warsaw, allegedly for theft of cosmetics. Hours later, the same media reported that the Bulgarian Foreign ministry has stated that there was no detention or theft, and quoted Poptodorova's explanation that the interaction with the authorities was due to a mistake, and she paid a fine for that error. Former foreign minister Ivaylo Kalfin said that he noticed that dozens of Russian media were the ones to initially write about the case, and stressed on the information published there that Poptodorova was "the leading diplomat, who helped Bulgaria join the EU and NATO".

Elena Poptodorova is married and has one son.