Biography

Will Stevens is the Deputy Assistant Secretary for West Africa in the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of African Affairs. From 2022-2024, he served as Consul General at the U.S. Consulate General in Lagos, Nigeria. He has also served as acting Consul General in Cape Town, South Africa (2020-2022), Director of Public Diplomacy Training at the Foreign Service Institute (2017-2019), Senior Advisor for Countering Violent Extremism in sub-Saharan Africa (2016-2017), Spokesperson at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow (2014-2016), and Spokesperson for the Bureau of African Affairs (2013-2014). In 2014, he received the Edward R. Murrow Award for Excellence in Public Diplomacy, the State Department’s highest award for public diplomacy work, for his work leading the U.S. Government’s Interagency Task Force on countering Russian propaganda during the 2014 Ukraine crisis. He has also served as Chief of Staff at the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, chief of public affairs at the U.S. Embassy in Turkmenistan, in the press and cultural affairs offices at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv and in Minsk, Belarus.

A native of Great Falls, Virginia and a graduate of Brigham Young University, Will speaks fluent Russian and passable Hebrew. He is an avid gardener, tennis player and bodyboarder.