Deputy Chief of Mission

Biography of DCM Martina Boustani

DCM Martina Boustani

Martina Boustani arrived in Benin on September 16, 2007.   She lead the Embassy team during two years of negotiations which resulted in the purchase of a site for a New Embassy Compound (NEC) in August 2009, and served as Chargé d”Affaires intermittently for a total of 5 months.   
Prior to her assignment to Benin, Ms Boustani served as Management Officer at the US Embassy in Kampala, Uganda, where she oversaw the completion of a new wing on the Chancery building and served as A/DCM for months during a protracted vacancy in the Front Office.
Ms Boustani joined the Foreign Service in 1995, and served her first tour as GSO in Togo.  In Johannesburg, South Africa, Ms Boustani headed the non-immigrant visa section during a consular tour.  From Johanesburg, Ms Boustani volunteered to serve in Kosovo in the Kosovo Diplomatic Observers’ mission (KDOM) during the last two months before the outbreak of hostilities in 1998.  From 2000 to 2002, she worked in the political section in Berlin, Germany, serving as the Embassy’s senior liaison to the US Special Envoy on Holocaust Issues.  
Ms Boustani is a native of Munich, Germany.  She graduated from the University of Tuebingen with a B.A. In 1979, she won an exchange scholarship to the University of Michigan.  Ms Boustani earned Masters’ degrees from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.
She is married to Elias Boustani.  They are parents of a daughter and two sons and grandparents of two girls and two boys.  She speaks, reads and writes French, German and Afrikaans.