In the picture left to right: Volodymyr Omelyan, Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine; Mike Lally, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and Morgan Williams, President of U.S.-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC)

BIO: MICHAEL A. LALLY

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA)

Michael Lally is Deputy Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA).  Mr. Lally leads efforts to develop trade policy and facilitate business development with U.S. firms in the EMEA region. His duties include business and policy development and operational oversight of five Washington business units and over forty U.S. Commercial Service offices in the EMEA region.

Mr. Lally, a Senior Foreign Service Officer with rank of Minister Counselor, was previously Commercial Counselor at the U.S. Embassy’s Commercial Service in Ankara, Turkey, where he managed a countrywide business development portfolio in three Turkish cities focused on energy, infrastructure, and trade and project finance.  From 2006-2009, Mr. Lally was the Commercial Counselor in the U.S. Embassy’s Commercial Service in Mexico City, Mexico. Mr. Lally focused on U.S.-Mexican infrastructure business development.

From 2003-2005, Mr. Lally was Director of the U.S. Export Assistance Center in Philadelphia, and provided business consulting and advisory on overseas market development. Prior to this position, Mr. Lally was Senior Commercial Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Baku, Azerbaijan where he worked extensively on energy and transportation transactions. From 1999-2000, Mr. Lally was with the AES Corporation, the world’s largest independent power producer, as Vice President for Business Development and co-head of AES’s Moscow office. Prior to that, Mr. Lally was Senior Commercial Officer with the U.S. Embassy in Almaty, Kazakhstan (1996-1999), where he advised on privatization transactions and project advocacy with the Kazakhstani government and U.S. firms. From 1993-1996, Mr. Lally was Commercial Attaché at the U.S. Embassy, Kiev, Ukraine, where he participated in opening the first U.S. Commercial Office in independent Ukraine. In 2002, Mr. Lally was temporarily posted to Afghanistan to support U.S. business development in the telecoms sector and a major hotel venture.

Before joining the Foreign Service, Mr. Lally was an Energy Analyst with the Science Applications International Corporation in McLean, Virginia, where he specialized in post-Soviet energy markets. Mr. Lally holds a Master’s Degree from Indiana University and Bachelor Degrees with Honors from The American University in Washington D.C. He is a graduate of the Wharton Management Program of the University of Pennsylvania. He speaks Russian, Spanish and Turkish. In March 2008, he was a Faculty Member at the U.S. Air Force’s Wargaming Institute at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. He holds Bronze and Silver Medals for superior federal service in support of U.S. business development in Kazakhstan, the Caucasus, Turkey and Afghanistan. His writings have been published in the Christian Science Monitor, the Foreign Service Journal, Turkish Policy Quarterly, and Inside a U.S. Embassy. He has studied trade policy (2011) and international security (2015) at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Mr. Lally is a native of the Bronx, New York and the son of Irish immigrants. He is married to the former Lilia Chichikal of Kiev, Ukraine. They have a daughter and live in Virginia.

LINK: https://2016.trade.gov/press/bios/lally.asp