2011 LGBT Pride Month Bios: Lawrence D Pixa

For the third year, in honor of Pride month, the State Department has published biographies of some of the Department's LGBT employees.

First up is Larry Pixa.

Lawrence (Larry) Pixa is an economic affairs cone FSO en route to his first post as consular officer in Montreal, Canada. He is currently in French language training at FSI. He happily claims the U.S. Foreign Service as his fourth career and long term dream come true.

Before joining the Foreign Service, Larry worked 10 years in technical program management and business strategy for Microsoft Corporation. Larry managed technology-based programs supporting product development, sales, marketing, and public sector cooperation. Most recently, as part of Microsoft’s broader corporate social responsibility efforts, Larry oversaw programs in national security and public safety. Larry developed and managed public-private partnerships with government agencies and international organizations worldwide.

Just prior to working for Microsoft, Larry was Chief of Party on a 2-year USAID technical implementation project in Kyiv, Ukraine. Working directly with the National Bank and the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, Larry managed a technical deployment enabling secured lending for the private banks. Larry also consulted on related work in the Republics of Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, and Poland.

Finally, Larry has 9 years of experience in science and technology policy managing programs at NASA. Notably, Larry was Sr. Program Manager for the NASA High Performance Computing and Communications Program based in Washington, D.C. Larry also managed programs at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Maryland, and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California.

Larry holds a master of arts degree in international relations from George Mason University and a bachelor of science degree in language & linguistics from Georgetown University. Larry learned Spanish as a high school exchange student in Cáceres, Spain and also speaks French, Russian, and German.

Larry is a former army brat born and raised in Germany. He joins the Foreign Service with his life partner of over 20 years and their wire hair fox terrier, Lyudmila, adopted while living in Ukraine.