Shobhit Kumar is a foreign service officer at the U.S. Department of State. He currently serves as special assistant to the ambassador and economic officer at the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi, Vietnam. Earlier, Shobhit was the special assistant to the ambassador and vice consul at the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and has also served in Beijing and Doha. Shobhit graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors from Princeton University with a B.A. in public and international affairs, earning certificates in Mandarin Chinese, history, and the practice of diplomacy. He later graduated with honors from Yale University with an M.A. in global affairs, where he worked with former Secretary of State John Kerry as a Kerry Fellow and taught Mandarin Chinese to Yale College students. He is the recipient of numerous State Department Superior and Meritorious Honor awards. His foreign languages include Mandarin, Hindi, Vietnamese, Korean, Swahili, and Spanish.