AMBASSADOR M. MICHAEL AYNIK
Professor of International Relations
at the American High School in Paris.
Ambassador Aynik retired from the State Department after a thirty-year career.
His most recent position was as U.S. Ambassador to North Macedonia. Prior to his assignment in Skopje, Ambassador Aynik served as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest, Romania, from 1995 to 1999.
During the breakup of Yugoslavia, Ambassador Ajnik served as U.S. Consul General to Croatia and Slovenia (1988-1992). He arrived in Yugoslavia after serving three years (1984-1987) in the Economic Section (first as Energy Officer and then as Chief of Section) of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. Similarly, Ambassador Ajnik previously served as Petroleum Officer at the U.S. Embassy in Lagos, Nigeria, from 1981-1983. Prior to this assignment, he worked in the Fuel and Energy Section of the U.S. Department of State.
After his retirement, Ambassador Aynic returned to Romania, where he developed and later successfully completed a public-private partnership with the Romanian National Gas Company to develop underground gas storage facilities. He later became a partner in a Romanian consulting company specializing in energy, defense, and IT.
Ambassador Aynik returned to public service in 2009 when he was invited to the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow to serve as Senior American and Deputy Executive Director for Sustainability and Commercialization. In 2012, while maintaining his position at the ISTC, he concurrently served as Executive Director of the Science and Technology Center in Ukraine until the end of his contract in 2014.
Mr. Ambassador currently resides in Paris, where he is a professor of international relations at the American Graduate School in Paris.