Mr. Tribble joined the Foreign Service in 1987 and started his career with an assignment in Santiago, Chile followed by a two-year tour in the Department’s Politico-Military bureau. He spent the next eleven years working on U.S.-European relations in Washington and overseas. That phase included a three-year tour in Bonn, where he was an exchange diplomat in the German Foreign Office prior to heading the embassy’s external political affairs section, as well as assignments on the Germany, Cyprus, and OSCE desks, and as coordinator for Baltic Sea regional cooperation programs.

After a tour as political counselor in Port-au-Prince, Haiti in 2003-2005, Mr. Tribble served as a senior watch officer in the State Department's Operations Center, then attended the National War College at Ft. McNair where he earned Distinguished Graduate honors (and helped win the President’s Cup). Following a stint as director of the Department’s 24-hour Intelligence and Research Watch, Mr. Tribble led a provincial reconstruction team embedded with a U.S. Army brigade in eastern Baghdad, Iraq, in 2008-2009. In 2009-2012, he served as principal officer and consul general in Munich, Germany before transferring to Havana.

Mr. Tribble holds a B.A. in history from Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, an M.A. in international relations from the University of Southern California, and an M.A. in national security studies from the U.S. National War College.

Prior to joining the Foreign Service, Mr. Tribble lived and studied for extended periods in Germany and spent a year as a volunteer teacher in Honduras. A lifelong singer and amateur musician, Mr. Tribble is a member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (the Grammy Association). He is also a sports junkie; he plays baseball, basketball, and soccer, and has been an FC Bayern fan for forty years. He speaks German, French, Spanish, and some Haitian Creole.