New US Ambassador to Trinidad & Tobago arrives in October

(TRINIDAD GUARDIAN) The new US am­bas­sador to Trinidad & Tobago Joseph Mo­nde­llo ar­rives next month, US Charge D’Af­fairs John McIn­tyre said yes­ter­day.

Brook­lyn-born, Mon­del­lo, 80, was con­firmed as Am­bas­sador in June. He is the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion choice as Am­bas­sador, re­plac­ing John Estra­da. The lat­ter left T&T im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter Trump won in 2017.

Mon­del­lo, a politi­cian, at­tor­ney and uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor, was in­ter­viewed with­in the US Sen­ate com­mit­tee screen­ing process ear­li­er this year. He was asked about T&T in re­la­tion to Venezuela and about re­ports that over 100 T&T na­tion­als had joined ISIS.

Soon af­ter be­ing con­firmed in June, Mod­el­lo said he was anx­ious to get to T&T and was in touch with US of­fi­cials here dai­ly. He al­so said he had un­der­gone sev­en weeks of train­ing in­clud­ing counter-ter­ror­ism.

Mon­del­lo served as Coun­sel at Berk­man, Henoch, Pe­ter­son, Ped­dy, & Fenchel, PC of Gar­den City, New York since 1997.

He was chair­man of the Nas­sau Coun­ty Re­pub­li­can Com­mit­tee in West­bury, New York since 1983.

From 2006 to 2009, he was con­cur­rent­ly chair­man of the New York Re­pub­li­can State Com­mit­tee. Mon­del­lo al­so served as an air­man in the New York Air Na­tion­al Guard (1955-1956), a cor­po­ral in the US Army (1956-1958) and in the New York Guard for 25 years, at­tain­ing the rank of Ma­jor Gen­er­al.

He earned a BA from Hof­s­tra Uni­ver­si­ty and a Ju­ris Doc­tor de­gree (equiv­a­lent to a British LLB de­gree) from the New Eng­land School of Law.

US ar­ti­cles de­scribe Mon­del­lo as hav­ing served as a pri­ma­ry school­teacher and a US Navy in­tel­li­gence of­fi­cer, and that his vol­un­tary ac­tiv­i­ties ranged from the Boys Scouts of Amer­i­ca to var­i­ous RC char­i­ties and or­gan­i­sa­tions.