Jaimee M. Neel

Jaimee Macana Neel is a Foreign Service officer, as is her husband, James P. Neel. They served in the U.S. Embassy in London, England; Baghdad, Iraq; Cairo, Egypt; and Shanghai, China and are located in Beijing City, China. It is difficult to be what is called a tandem couple in the Foreign Service, seeking to be assigned to the same embassy every three years. She had lived with her husband in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and worked for the U.S. Consulate for two years before joining the Foreign Service in 2006 as a public diplomacy officer.

Neel was awarded the prestigious Secretary of State’s Award for Volunteerism Abroad in 2005 for her work with a Brazilian orphanage, and a Meritorious Honor Award in 2009 for her contributions to the U.S. Mission in China. She served as a consular officer in Shanghai, China.

She was born in Kahuku, Hawaii, and comes from a heritage of Filipino, Hawaiian, Chinese, and Scottish. Her family later moved to San Diego, and she attended Brigham Young University and majored in political science. While at BYU, she also in college participated with the Living Legends performance group, which showcases Polynesian, Hispanic, and Native American song and dance. After her mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Taiwan, she studied law at BYU. After graduating with a Juris Doctor degree, she taught English as an inner-city schoolteacher in Washington, D.C., and in the South Bronx in New York City, with the Teach For America program. She also completed an ALM in History at Harvard University, where her thesis research focused on a Hawaiian immigrant community in Utah from 1889 to 1917, of which several residents were her Hawaiian ancestors.

The Neels are parents of two children.