Cynthia Stroum, Former Luxembourg Ambassador, Slammed by State Dept.

A month after quitting her post as US Ambassador to Luxembourg, Cynthia Stroum was called “bullying, hostile” and ineffective in a January State Department report.

Stroum, a political ally and donor to President Barack Obama, was named to the envoy job in December 2009. She held a widely-perceived “plum ambassadorship,” where financial backers of the president with little to no diplomatic experience are given unimportant attaché posts.

That lack of experience was exposed in an inspection report from the Department of State, which railed on Stroum’s actions, attitude, and lack of managerial skills.

According to the document, employees who worked at the embassy called Stroum “aggressive, bullying, hostile, and intimidating” and complained that the work environment when Stroum was around was “difficult, unhappy, and uncertain.”

The diplomat mission was plagued with low morale and high stress, the report added, and noted that workflow and management were almost non-existent.

“Poor management of the front office has aggravated communication within and outside the office and has led to serious inefficiencies,” the State Department said. “Taskings are arbitrary and erratic, the flow of information is excessively restricted, and the work of embassy staff members is not properly channeled or coordinated.”

According to the State Department website, Stroum has a background as a businesswoman, and she successfully invested in companies like Starbucks. Apparently whatever personal characteristics allowed her to be a good businesswoman didn’t translate into being a good Ambassador, the report noted.

Her staff criticized her “confrontational management style” and “absence of a sense of direction” that brought the Luxembourg Embassy to a “state of dysfunction,” the report said.

Additionally, she green-lit the spending of $3,400 in funds for the purchase of alcohol at an end-of-year party in violation of guidelines.

But Stroum has no qualms about her time as Ambassador.

In a statement she released in January obtained by Politico.com, Stroum maintained: “Not only have I developed a very strong bond with the people of Luxembourg, I have loved the work and am tremendously proud of what we have accomplished during my tenure.”