Maryruth Coleman became Deputy Chief of Mission at the American Embassy in Ljubljana, Slovenia in August 2005.

Ms. Coleman joined the Foreign Service in November 1987.  She comes to Slovenia from the State Department’s Office of Nordic and Baltic Affairs, where she served as Deputy Director and helped manage U.S. policy to integrate the Baltic countries into Euro-Atlantic institutions.  Ms. Coleman served in the Economic and Consular sections at the U.S. Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria in her first overseas assignment from 1988-90.  Subsequently, she worked as an Economic Officer at U.S. Embassy Moscow from 1991-93, and headed the Political-Economic Section at the American Embassy in Riga, Latvia from 1997-2000.  In her domestic assignments in Washington, Ms. Coleman has served as a coordinator in the Office of Assistance to the New Independent States (1994-95), as Special Assistant to the Under Secretary for Economic Affairs (1995-96), and as Senior Political Officer in the Office of European Union Affairs (2000-2002), where she managed preparations for Ministerial and summit meetings between the United States and the European Union.

Before entering the State Department, Ms. Coleman was Assistant Professor of Political Science and East Asian Studies at Connecticut College in New London, Connecticut. She did doctoral research for two years at Nanjing University as one of the first American exchange scholars to study in China after normalization of U.S.-Chinese diplomatic relations.  She has a PhD. in Political Science from Harvard University, Masters degrees in Political Science and East Asian Studies from Harvard and Stanford Universities, and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Regis College, in Weston, Massachusetts.  Ms. Coleman was born in Boston, Massachusetts. Her husband, John L. Withers, II, is also a Foreign Service Officer and is currently the U.S. Ambassador to Albania.