consul general michael barkin
Michael Barkin is currently Principal Officer and Consul General in Matamoros, Mexico, a post he assumed in September 2009. A career member of the Foreign Service, he served from 2006-2009 as deputy principal officer and head of consular services in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. In Amsterdam he focused on crisis response coordination and in assisting the more than 1 million U.S. citizens who visit the Netherlands each year.
From 2002-2005 he served as consul in the U.S. Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, where he worked on a multitude of issues including facilitating travel to the U.S. and NATO accession for Bulgaria. From 1999-2001 Michael worked in the Office of Multilateral Affairs in the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor (DRL), managing democracy building and Rule of Law programs in the Former Yugoslavia and serving as the State Department liaison to the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), which promote reconciliation by working with families in Bosnia and Kosovo to identify missing loved ones.
He began his Foreign Service career with consular and political tours in Honduras and Uruguay. He is a lawyer by training and worked as state prosecutor and public defender prior to joining the Foreign Service in 1995. Originally from Florida, he is a graduate of Emory University in Atlanta (Bachelor of Arts in Literature and Philosophy), New York University (Juris Doctor), and Princeton University (Master in Public Policy).