Joy M. Sakurai has started her role as Chargé d’Affaires ad interim at the U.S. Mission to ASEAN as of July 2025. This marks her third assignment in Indonesia.
Sakurai is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service. Her recent assignments include serving as Deputy Chief of Mission in Seoul, Republic of Korea, and in Vientiane, Laos. She has also held positions as Principal Officer in Fukuoka, Japan, and worked in Tokyo and Islamabad, Pakistan. In Washington, she served in both the Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Bureau of East Asian & Pacific Affairs.
She graduated with distinction from the National War College in 2020 and received the Theodore Roosevelt Award for scholarship and leadership. Sakurai completed her undergraduate studies at Lake Forest College. She speaks Bahasa Indonesia, Japanese, French, and basic Lao. Originally from Hawai’i, she is married with two children.