Robert Banks joined the U.S. Foreign Service in 1983. During his 28-year career as a public diplomacy practitioner, he served as assistant executive officer in Bonn, West Germany; deputy public affairs officer (PAO) in Nicosia, Cyprus; assistant press attaché in Seoul, Korea; east Asia policy officer in the Worldnet Television and Film Service; press attaché in Managua, Nicaragua; cultural attaché in Seoul; examiner for the foreign service oral entrance exam in the Bureau of Human Resources; planning and coordination officer in the office of public diplomacy in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs; PAO in Buenos Aires, Argentina; state department chair on the faculty of the Marine Corps War College in Quantico, VA., where he taught regional studies; and U.S. public diplomat in residence at USC’s Center on Public Diplomacy.

Following his retirement from the foreign service, he taught public diplomacy as an adjunct professor in USC’s master of public diplomacy program. He is currently a clinical associate professor of public diplomacy at USC Annenberg, a CPD faculty fellow, and director of the master of public diplomacy program. Banks authored CPD Perspectives, “A Resource Guide to Public Diplomacy Evaluation,” in 2011, and served as the guest editor for the CPD Perspectives magazine in 2019-2020.