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The new U.S. Ambassador to Latvia Nancy B. Pettit is scheduled to arrive in Riga today, the U.S. Embassy informed LETA.

Pettit's accreditation ceremony with President Raimonds Vejonis will be on September 8.

Pettit, a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, has been the director of the Office of Western European Affairs in the Department of State Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs since 2013.

Previously, Pettit served in the U.S. Department of State as director of the Office of Policy Planning and Coordination at the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement (2010-2013). She has also worked as information officer at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, narcotics affairs officer at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, and political officer at the U.S. Embassy in Vienna.

Pettit earned a B.A. from Vassar College in New York and a M.A. from the University of Michigan. She is the recipient of two Superior Honor Awards and seven Meritorious Honor Awards from the Department of State. She speaks Russian, Ukrainian, German and Spanish.

As reported, the former U.S. Ambassador to Latvia Mark Pekala returned to the United States last August.

U.S. President Barack Obama nominated Pettit as the next U.S. ambassador to Latvia in August 2014. She went through her hearing at the U.S. Senate's Foreign Relations Committee this past May.