Benjamin Dille is a 1978 graduate of Moorhead High School and a National Merit Scholar. During high school, he was a member of several bands and pit orchestras. Dille graduated cum laude with a degree in history and international relations from Macalester College in 1982.
After earning his law degree from University of Minnesota in 1986, Dille practiced law and was a judicial law clerk in Moorhead. He was awarded a Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarship to the University of Exeter in England, where he earned a master’s degree in European law in 1991. In 2012 he completed his doctorate from the London School of Economics.
Accepted into the U.S. Department of State’s Foreign Service in 1991, Dille has served as a diplomat in posts in seven nations. From 1992-94, he served in Venezuela in the consular and economic sections. From 1994-96, he was in Mexico in the consular and political sections, and in 1997-2000 he was general services officer to the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai. In Nicaragua from 2000-02, Dille assisted American property claimants and served as deputy chief of the economic section. In 2003-05 in Minsk, Belarus, Dille was in charge of administrative operations, he sometimes served as Charge d’Affaires (acting for absent ambassador), and his team received the highest marks of the 180 embassies for the quality of services the staff delivered. From 2005-07, he served as supervisory post management officer in Washington, D.C., where his team of eight Foreign Service officers provided logistical support to 85 overseas posts. In 2009-10, Dille volunteered to serve in Iraq as a diplomat embedded with American troops. From 2008-12, Dille was head of Embassy administrative operations in Prague in the Czech Republic. He is scheduled to assume a similar position in Kazakhstan in 2013.
In 2008, Dille was awarded the Secretary of State’s prestigious Arnold Raphel Memorial Award for his mentoring, and he has received six meritorious honor awards, a Distinguished Service Award for service during a coup in Caracas, and numerous commendations for his writing. Dille has maintained ties to Moorhead, returning for reunions, guest lecturing at Minnesota State University Moorhead and Concordia College, and writing a draft of a biography of R.M. Probstfield, Clay County’s first permanent settler.
Benjamin and his wife, Anna, have five children, Daniel, Sasha, Nicolas, Angela and Debbie. He lives in Falls Church, Va.
Update: Benjamin Dille headed Embassy administrative operations in Kazakhstan from 2013-2016. While still with the State Department, Dille was a visiting associate professor at George Washington University from August 2016 until July 2017. Since July 2017, he has been executive director for the Bureau of African Affairs for the U.S. Department of State.