Lora Baker is a career diplomat and currently serves as the Commercial Counselor at the U.S. Embassy in Singapore. Prior to this assignment, Lora served as the Senior Policy Officer at the U.S. Mission to the EU in Brussels and oversaw the Digital and Healthcare Policy Portfolio. This included the successful implementation of the Privacy Shield Framework in Brussels. The Framework sustains over $1 trillion in goods and services trade across the Atlantic and is used by over 4,300 U.S. companies.

Lora served as the Senior Commercial Officer at the U.S. embassy in Lisbon, Portugal from 2014-2018. She was responsible for managing Commercial Service programs in Portugal and defending the commercial interests of U.S. companies operating in the region. Lora received the State Department’s Superior Honor Award for her four years of creative, persistent, and sustained excellence in developing innovative programming to enhance commercial diplomacy and promote trade and investment.

Lora also served as the Principal Commercial Officer in Dusseldorf, Germany where she worked extensively on trade promotion programs, resulting in one of the highest performing offices in Europe. Lora also served as the Principal Commercial Officer in Guadalajara, Mexico and as a Commercial Attaché in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she managed several high-profile advocacy cases and received the Director General’s Innovation Award for creating a highly successful trade promotion program for the Western Hemisphere.

Lora also had several temporary assignments served as the Acting Senior Commercial Officer and Commercial Liaison to the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development in London. She also managed key Commerce Department trade events in Hamburg and Seoul.

Prior to joining the Commercial Service, Lora was a financial consultant to Williams-Sonoma Inc. and Visa International in San Francisco. Lora has also worked extensively in both West Africa and Latin America, in the areas of international finance and export marketing. She has designed and implemented international trade courses for women entrepreneurs and worked with refugee camps in Ghana to implement micro-finance programs to assist Liberian Refugees. In addition, Ms. Baker has created partnerships and pioneered international trade programs with the U.S. Agency for International Development, the American Embassy in Accra, UNHCR and Women’s World Banking. She also created a profitable magazine that was devoted to micro-finance.

Lora is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management, where she earned an MBA. She also participated in advanced trade courses in Spain and Latin America. Lora is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, Twi, and German and conversational in French.