Michael Thurston arrived in Rangoon in August 2011 to serve as the Chargé d’Affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Burma.
He most recently served as the Consul General at the U.S. Consulate General in Melbourne, Australia (2008-2011) and prior to that he was the Team Leader of the Diyala South Embedded Provincial Reconstruction Team in Diyala Province, Iraq (2007-2008).
He has also served as the Deputy Chief of Mission in Kigali, Rwanda (2005-2007), the Consul General in Durban, South Africa (2002-2005), and he has also served in Auckland, Addis Ababa, Colombo, and Mexico City.
In the U.S. he has had assignments as a Staff Assistant to an Assistant Secretary and as an analyst in the Office of Strategic Proliferation Affairs.
Mr. Thurston is a graduate of the University of Washington in Seattle, as well as the University Of Washington School Of Law. He worked as a Deputy Prosecuting Attorney in Seattle, Washington before joining the Foreign Service.