Ambassador Caroline Bilkey took up the role of New Zealand Ambassador to France and Permanent Representative to the OECD in April 2022. She is also accredited to Portugal and Monaco.

Caroline was Director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Auckland Office from 2018 to 2021.

She was New Zealand’s Ambassador to Brazil and Suriname from 2015 until May 2018 and High Commissioner to Samoa from 2007 to 2010.

Caroline has had postings in Bangkok and Geneva, and has worked for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Rwanda and Tanzania. She also worked at the New Zealand Embassy in Washington as Director of Congressional Relations.

Early in her career, Caroline spent a year seconded to the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Canberra. She has been Chief of Protocol and has worked on a range of international legal issues in the course of her career as well as on political and economic relations with a number of New
Zealand’s bilateral partners.

Caroline has bachelor degrees in law and political science from the University of Auckland and a Master of Management degree from the Sasin Graduate Institute at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok.