Harry W. Kopp is the author of three books on diplomacy: Career Diplomacy (revised fourth edition, with John K. Naland, Georgetown University Press, 2021); Commercial Diplomacy and the National Interest (American Academy of Diplomacy, 2004); and Voice of the Foreign Service: A History of the American Foreign Service Association (Foreign Service Books, second edition, 2024).

Former Secretary of State Lawrence S. Eagleburger, a career Foreign Service Officer, called Career Diplomacy, first published in 2008 and now in its fourth edition, “the best description of life in the Foreign Service—its challenges, dangers, satisfactions, and fun—I have ever seen.”

Kopp joined the Foreign Service as an entry-level officer in 1967 and served as deputy assistant secretary of state for international trade policy in the Carter and Reagan administrations. His overseas posts included Warsaw, where he directed the United States–Poland Trade Development Center, and Brasília, Brazil, where he was deputy chief of mission. He received meritorious and superior honor awards from the Department of State and a presidential award for meritorious public service. He left the Foreign Service in 1985 to join L. A. Motley and Company, a lobbying and consulting firm, as a founding partner.

Kopp is a frequent contributor to the Foreign Service Journal, where he has served on the editorial board. His articles and commentary have appeared in the New York Times and other publications. His short story “Trotsky in the Bronx” won the 2012 Goldenberg Fiction Prize from the Bellevue Literary Review.

In 2024 DACOR, an association of foreign affairs professionals, awarded him the Foreign Service Cup in recognition of his distinguished diplomatic career and post-retirement contributions.

He is a graduate of Hamilton College and holds a master’s degree in Russian and East European Studies from Yale University. He lives with his wife Jane in Baltimore, Maryland.