James McCarthy

James (Jim) McCarthy serves as the Senior Commercial Officer (SCO) in Manila, Philippines, on a four-year tour ending in July 2016. Until June 2012, Jim served as the Deputy Senior Commercial Officer (DSCO) in Johannesburg, South Africa. In this position, in addition to covering South Africa, Jim coordinated the trade promotion efforts of over 20 Partnership Posts in southern and West Africa where the Commercial Service is represented by the State Department's Economic Section. These countries included Cameroon, Cote d' Ivoire, Mozambique, Botswana, Angola, Zambia, Namibia, Madagascar, and Mauritius.

Jim has also served on special temporary duty assignments in Jakarta as the acting SCO and DSCO in June 2003 and July - September 2003. He has been involved in several VIP visits, notably as a site officer for Vice President Biden's visit to South Africa in 2010; as control officer the Secretary of Commerce's Business Development Mission to Honduras (2005) and Under Secretary Padilla's trip to Costa Rica (2008); meeting coordinator for then Commerce Secretary Mineta's during his visit to Brunei in 2000 for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meetings; and as a site officer for several meetings of the secretaries of Commerce and State during the APEC Summit meetings in Jakarta in 1994. He also served as Commerce Secretary Daley's control officer during a Gore-Chernomyrdin summit meeting in Moscow.

Jim's Commercial Service career follows on his experience as the industry analyst for the fiber optics industry in the Department of Commerce's (DOC) Office of Telecommunications. Jim focused on market access for U.S. telecommunications products and services in several countries and acted as the DOC representative in the U.S. delegation to the initial meetings of the APEC Telecommunications Working Group.

In 1989, Jim was selected as one of two persons from the Department of Commerce to participate in the year-long U.S. Government Women's Executive Leadership (WEL) Mid-Level Training program. Jim was selected one of four men in the WEL government-wide class of 240.

Jim received a Masters Degree in Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh in 1978 and a Bachelors of Arts degree with a major in Political Science from St. Bonaventure University in 1977. He is married (wife, Zoe) with two sons, Matthew and Brendan.