Ambassador Jeffrey Ross Gunter, MD (born on January 31, 1961) is an American healthcare executive, philanthropist, diplomat, and former U.S. Ambassador under President Donald Trump serving as the 24th United States Ambassador to Iceland.

Ambassador Gunter attended the University of California, Berkeley for his undergrad. He has spent time abroad in Ecuador and became fluent in Spanish where he gained an appreciation for cultural immersion. He later attended the University of Southern California for medical school. While in medical school, Ambassador Gunter studied abroad in Israel and has learned Hebrew, French, and Dutch.

After receiving his Doctor of Medicine degree and completing his residency, Ambassador Gunter was a Clinical Professor of Medicine at the Keck School of Medicine of USC. As the Chief Resident of Dermatology at the LAC/USC Medical Center, a Clinical Professor of Medicine/Dermatology, and co-author of scientific publications, Ambassador Gunter has presided over healthcare and the education of physicians and medical students.

He started his private practice in California in 1992, focusing on the needs of the rural community, as well as military personnel and their dependents, eventually expanding his practice to rural Southern and Northern Nevada beginning in 1995. Ambassador Gunter has specialized in primarily micrographic skin cancer surgery during his time in the medical field.

In 2018, President Donald J. Trump nominated Ambassador Gunter to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to Iceland. He was unanimously confirmed in 2019 and served as Ambassador from 2019-2021. During his tenure, he was involved in national security initiatives in the High North related to China and Russia.

Ambassador Gunter has taken a firm stance in peace through strength. His long list of accomplishments has helped solidify the strong relationship between the United States and Iceland.

Ambassador Gunter is the grandson of Ukrainian and Belarusian Jewish immigrants. Many of his extended family members were killed in the notorious Minsk massacres of the Holocaust. His grandmother immigrated to Canada, and later to the United States, and was one of the few members of her family who survived the Holocaust. In honor of his family’s history and legacy, Ambassador Gunter is proud to serve on the National Board of Directors for the Republican Jewish Coalition in Washington D.C., where he received the Ronald Reagan Leadership Award in 2015.

Ambassador Gunter’s father was an attorney and officer in the United States military and his mother was a second-grade elementary school teacher. Ambassador Gunter resides in Nevada with his long-time partner, Heather J. Wilson.