Matt Otto

Matt Otto is a career member of the Foreign Service Construction Engineer (FSCE) specialty and has been the Project Director (PD) for the Mexico City New Embassy Compound (NEC) since December 2020.  Prior to his arrival to Mexico City in Jan 2020 to head up OBO’s engineering team as Construction Manager (CM), Matt served as the CM and later the PD for the $350 million Jakarta New Embassy Compound (NEC) from 2015-2019.  Matt served as the PD for the Port Moresby NEC from 2011-2014, and as the CM for the Bucharest NEC from 2009-2011.  Matt began his career in the Office of Construction Management for the Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) in 2007 as a Construction Executive in the European Branch responsible for the Berlin NOB and Frankfurt NAB projects.

Though Matt served for 15 years in the Foreign Service, he is not new to constructing abroad.  Immediately after graduating from the University of Texas at Austin with his B.S. in Civil Engineering, Matt started his construction management career in a local engineering firm in Saipan, Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas.  Matt worked as the project engineer on several public works contracts including the Saipan harbor expansion project, the largest capital project in Micronesia at the time.  Upon completion, Matt transferred to ExxonMobil Guam as project engineer managing all capital and maintenance projects in the CNMI and western Carolinian islands (Palau and Federated States of Micronesia).  He is a licensed professional civil engineer (P.E.) in the territory of Guam, USA.

Matt left ExxonMobil in 2002 to pursue personal interests and was later hired by the United Nations International School of Hanoi as Special Projects Advisor for the phased construction of their new 20-hectare campus.  During his time in Hanoi, he met U.S Embassy personnel that encouraged him to apply as a Foreign Service Construction Engineer specialist.

Matt calls home in Texas and enjoys golf, tennis, and hiking.  He is married to Liesa Otto, originally of New Zealand, and they have one son, Ty (17) attending high school in Kansas.