ambassador Janice Lee Jacobs

Janice Lee Jacobs (born 1946) was a United States career Senior Foreign Service Officer who was the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs, June 2008 to April 2014. She was United States Ambassador to Senegal concurrently accredited to Guinea-Bissau from April 2006 to June 2007.

Janice L. Jacobs was educated at Southern Illinois University, receiving a B.A. in French in 1968. She later received a M.A. in National Security Strategy from the National War College in 1995. Her husband, Ken Friedman, works for the Department of Defense. Jacobs spent many years overseas as a dependent of her father who was an education officer with USAID and of her first husband, Royce Fichte, a Foreign Service Officer.

In September 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Jacobs to the newly created position of "Transparency Coordinator." This position was created to coordinate the State Department response to the myriad of document requests related to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's email scandal. This appointment caused minor controversy after it was reported that Jacobs had donated to Hillary for America in June of 2015. Jacobs contributed $2,700, which is the maximum allowed by law, to Clinton's campaign on June 22, according to Federal Election Commission records.