Ms. Borsboom commenced her role as Minister Counsellor Defence Policy at the Embassy of Australia in Washington, DC, in March 2020. Prior to her current appointment, she was Assistant Secretary at the National Naval Shipbuilding Office, which is responsible for setting up one of the Australian Government’s largest capital investments (A$90 billion dollars) aimed at building a continuous naval shipbuilding industry in Australia.

Ms. Borsboom has had an extensive career in the private and public sector in Australia and Europe. She worked in the Department of Home Affairs as Director Southeast Asia and Director Migration and Humanitarian Organisations. From 2011 to 2015, she was posted by the Department of Defence to Brussels as Counsellor Defence and became the first Australian official to work at NATO’s Headquarters, providing political-military advice on NATO-led operations in Afghanistan and the broader Australia-NATO relationship. Prior to her diplomatic posting, in the Department of Defence, she was Director New Zealand and Pacific.

Ms. Borsboom started her career working as a public diplomacy and trade officer at the Australian Embassy in The Hague, and held several senior policy adviser roles in the Department of Defence, the Office of the Minister for Defence, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet focused on defense and security in the Indo-Pacific region, migration and border protection, human and humanitarian rights, trade and industry.

Before joining the Australian Public Service, she worked in the private sector for five years as marketing manager in the cultural sector and working in international commercial logistics.

She has a master’s degree in business and organizational anthropology from the Radboud University (Netherlands) and have a Graduate Certificate in Foreign Affairs from Deakin University (Australia). Ms. Borsboom is an alumnus of the George C. Marshall European Centre for Security Studies (U.S.-German) and the International Institute for Humanitarian Law (San Remo, Italy).