Lonnie Reece Smyth is a professor at the Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy at the National Defense University, Washington D.C.
Reece returned to teaching after serving as director of the office of Science and Technology Cooperation in the Department of State. A career member of the Senior Foreign Service, he also led the US Embassy in Dublin as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim from January 2017 to July 2019, where he advanced US-Irish bilateral relations on trade, investment, and cyber security. Previous assignments include as the political/economic counselor at the US Embassy in Beirut and the deputy director of the State Department’s Office of UN Political Affairs. Reece also served at the US Mission to NATO as the action officer in the NATO-Russia Council, as senior economic officer in the State Department’s Office of Arabian Peninsula Affairs, and as a watch officer in the Operations Center. Other overseas tours include Skopje, Sarajevo, and Islamabad.
Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Reece worked in the private sector as a senior trade consultant in Houston, London and New York.
Reece is originally from Dayton Ohio but grew up in Houston, Texas. He is a graduate of Baylor University and holds master’s degrees from Princeton University and the Université Libre de Bruxelles. He was also a National Security Affairs Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.