President Obama on Thursday confirmed New Yorker, Patrick Gaspard, the son of Haitian parents, will become the new ambassador of the United States to South Africa.
Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes praised Gaspard as “somebody who is close to the President (and) somebody who cares deeply about South Africa.”
In a brief email to the Daily News, Gaspard said he is “ecstatic and deeply humbled” at being chosen by Obama.
Gaspard was a political strategist and organizer who worked at the New York-based 1199/SEIU, the nation’s biggest healthcare workers union. He then went on to work as the National Political Director of the Barack Obama presidential campaign and was later named White House adviser after the historic win in 2008.
By 2011 he had moved on to the executive director’s job at the Democratic National Committee.
