Donald Townsend is Senior Commercial Officer with the U.S. & Foreign Commercial Service (USFCS), posted in Almaty,Kazakhstan. He leads the sole USFCS office in Central Asia.
Prior to his arrival in Almaty, Donald Townsend served as a patent attorney for the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command, as well as a Lead Other Transactions Specialist, with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), where his work was focused on vaccines, telemedicine, and surgical devices. From 2020-2021, he worked on the Operation Warp Speed vaccine development effort, acting as the lead IP attorney negotiating the Pfizer, Moderna and Janssenvaccine contracts, and was awarded the Department of the Army Civilian ServiceCommendation Medal.
From 2012 to 2017, Donald Townsend served as the regional Intellectual PropertyAttaché to Russia and the CIS, posted in U.S. Embassy Moscow, during which time he covered all of the countries of the former Soviet Union, as well as working in Eastern Europe and the Balkans. During that period, he co-chaired the AmCham IP Working Group, where in he advocated on behalf of IP right sholders to the Kazakh Government.
Prior to government service, Donald Townsend was a practicing patent attorney formany years, where he focused on licensing and negotiations related to software,chemical, pharmaceutical and biotechnical products, and worked in East Asia,the US and Europe, based in Tokyo, Japan and Washington, D.C. He holds a J.D. with a focus in securitieslaw, a B.S. in chemistry, and will graduate shortly with an M.S. inbiotechnology management.