Joanna Kuenssberg


Joanna Kate Kuenssberg is a British diplomat who was the United Kingdom's High Commissioner to Mozambique from 2014 to 2018.

Life and career

Kuenssberg was born in Lima, Peru, a daughter of Nick Kuenssberg, a Scottish businessman who was working in Lima at the time, and his wife Sally Robertson. Her younger sister is Laura Kuenssberg, and they have a brother David who is executive director of finance and resources at Brighton and Hove City Council. She was educated at New College, Oxford, where she gained a BA degree in Modern Languages in 1995.
The family of von Künßberg is an old German family, with roots back to the mid-12th century,. She is the granddaughter of Ekkehard von Kuenssberg, a German-born physician who emigrated to Scotland, and her great-grandfather was Professor Dr. Eberhard Georg Otto Freiherr von Künßberg, of the Thurnau line of the family: a separate and distinct line from that of Eberhard Freiherr von Kuensberg, the leader of the Sonderkommando assigned to transport Russian artifacts for the German Foreign Office during the Second World War. Ekkehard von Künßberg married the Protestant-raised Dr. Katharina Samson, the daughter of wealthy cloth manufacturer Gustav Samson, and Anna Goldschmidt, the fourth daughter of Hermann and Rosalie Goldschmidt.
Professor Dr. Eberhard von Künßberg was a scholar in the history of German Law, a professor at the University of Heidelberg, a legal linguist and a pioneer in the field of legal geography. From the death of Richard Schroeder in 1917 until von Künßberg's own death in 1941, he edited the Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch.
Her maternal line includes her great uncle James Wilson Robertson, the last British Governor-General of Nigeria; and Ian Robertson, Lord Robertson, her maternal grandfather.
She joined the Department of the Environment in 1995 and worked at the European Commission as Project Manager 1996–97, after which she joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. She was seconded to the Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs 1999–2000 and to the Quai d’Orsay EU Directorate 2000–01, followed by a post at the British embassy in Paris 2001–04. She was deputy head of mission at Lisbon, Portugal, 2010–14 and chargé d'affaires there from January to May 2011. From April 2014 she was High Commissioner to Mozambique, based at Maputo. She was replaced in July 2018.

Personal life

Kuenssberg married in 1997 and has three sons.