COLONEL TIM PETERMAN, from Roy, Utah, is the Senior Defense Official/Defense Attaché and Chief of JUSMAGTHAI to US Embassy, Bangkok, Thailand. He enlisted in the Army as an Arabic Linguist in 1994 and attended the United States Military Academy Preparatory School in July of 1995. He graduated from the United States Military Academy and commissioned as an Infantry Officer in June of 2000. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Art, Philosophy, and Literature, a certificate in the Thai Language for Foreigners from the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, and a Master of Arts in International Relations from Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, Thailand, which he earned while serving as an Olmsted Scholar to the Kingdom of Thailand from 2009-2012. In 2019, he became a Southeast Asia Region Foreign Area Officer.

Colonel Peterman is a decorated Army officer with more than two decades of operational leadership experience across infantry, cavalry, and joint assignments spanning multiple theaters of conflict. His career includes command at the company and squadron levels, with operational deployments in support of Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Joint Task Force Katrina, and other contingency operations. He has served in key staff roles at the division, corps, and combatant command levels, including as Chief of Plans for the 25th Infantry Division, Regimental Operations Officer for the 2nd Cavalry Regiment in Vilseck, Germany, and Executive Officer to the INDOPACOM J5 at Camp H.M. Smith, Hawaii. A graduate of the U.S. Army War College fellowship program, Colonel Peterman served as an Olmsted Scholar and Army Attaché to the Kingdom of Thailand, and subsequently as a Fellow at the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. He speaks Thai, Lao, and Modern Standard Arabic.

Colonel Peterman’s awards and decorations include the Bronze Star Medal (with three oak leaf clusters), the Purple Heart, the Joint Meritorious Service Medal, and the Meritorious Service Medal (with silver oak leaf cluster), among others. He holds the Ranger Tab and is a Master Parachutist and Master Combat Infantryman. Outside of his military service, Colonel Peterman is an avid ultra-runner and has coached cross-country, track, and distance running at the Junior Olympic, high school, and post-graduate levels.