Steve Knode is the Regional Senior Commercial Officer (RSCO) for Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Island Countries (PICs), based in Sydney. A member of the Senior Foreign Service, he has previously served as Deputy Senior Commercial Officer (DSCO) at the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, Japan, Senior Commercial Officer (SCO) for U.S. Commercial Service (USCS) in Pakistan, based in Karachi, and the head of USCS in São Paulo, Brazil. Part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, USCS is the principal trade and investment promotion agency of the U.S. government.
Steve has held a variety of other postings with USCS, including as a commercial officer at the Long Island Export Assistance Center (Old Westbury, New York) and the U.S. Embassy in Budapest, Hungary. Steve also worked at the U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia for the United States-Asia Environmental Partnership (US-AEP), a U.S. government program jointly funded by Commerce and USAID to promote U.S. environmental technologies.
Steve started his career in the public relations industry, working with Ogilvy Adams & Rinehart (now Ogilvy PR) and other agencies.
He received a B.A. in political science from Denison University and an MBA from Cornell University (Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management).