Kevin McGurgan took up his appointment as Her Majesty's Consul-General in Miami in December 2009.
Born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1971, Kevin joined the Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) in 1990. He comes to Miami from southern Afghanistan, where he spent 2008/9 as Deputy Head of the NATO Provincial Reconstruction Team in Helmand province. During this time he worked with Afghan political and tribal leaders to improve security and helped prepare the ground for the arrival of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade of the US Marine Corps in spring 2009. He was made an Officer of the British Empire (OBE) for his work in Afghanistan in the 2010 Queen's Birthday Honours.
Since 2005 he has worked predominately on international security issues. Until 2007 he was Deputy Head of the Iraq Policy Unit, responsible for political and security advice on the situation in southern Iraq followed by a secondment to the Home Office, working on organised crime, counter terrorism and migration issues.
This is Kevin's second posting to the United States. From 1997 – 2000, he worked at the United Nations in New York on multilateral sanctions regimes, negotiating and implementing sanctions regimes in the Middle East (against Libya and Saddam Hussein's Iraq), Asia (the Taleban) and diamond and arms embargoes in Africa (Sierra Leone and Angola). Kevin's earlier diplomatic career has seen him serve short tours in Russia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria (1993-4); as a press officer in the UK's Permanent Representation to the European Union (1994-5); as a political and consular officer in Bosnia (1996-7) and from 2003-2005 as Head of the Political and Economic team in Sweden with a specific focus on European policy issues and counterterrorism.
In London he has also worked on Afghanistan, the Balkans and arms export policy. Within the FCO he assesses candidates for promotion to middle management and is also a qualified Trauma Risk Management Assessor.
contemplating running the full marathon in 2011.