A career diplomat, Cecilia Attard-Pirotta joined the Ministry for Foreign Affairs in 1983 as a university student, and throughout her 39-year career she managed Malta’s relations with several countries, working on Mediterranean, European Union, and Commonwealth issues, as well as focusing on specific thematic subjects, such as trade, the environment and development issues. She was one of Malta’s delegates to the CSCE 1992 Summit, Helsinki, and was subsequently appointed as Malta’s Delegate to the Committee of Senior Officials.

Over the years Ambassador Attard-Pirotta occupied several senior positions within the Ministry for Foreign Affairs; between 1999 and 2002 she served as Director, responsible for Bilateral Relations, and was also involved in the EU-Malta Screening Process, as Malta prepared to join the European Union. She was subsequently appointed Ambassador to Spain, becoming the first woman to be appointed as a bilateral ambassador resident overseas – a post she held until June 2004.

In July of that year, she was appointed Permanent Secretary within the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and
Investment Promotion, becoming the first woman in Malta’s Civil Service to occupy such a post. In 2007, Ambassador Attard-Pirotta also served as one of Malta’s Sherpas for the EU Constitution Negotiations (Treaty of Lisbon).

In 2010 Ambassador Attard-Pirotta was appointed Deputy Secretary General of the Union for the Mediterranean and was responsible for Social and Civil Affairs. Over this three-year assignment, she worked on projects for underprivileged girls, focusing on education, decent work and improving the status of women and girls.

In January 2016 Ambassador Attard-Pirotta was appointed resident Ambassador to the State of Israel, presenting her Credentials to President Reuven Rivlin in February 2016 – a post she held until July 2020. Upon her return to Malta Ambassador Attard-Pirotta was appointed Malta’s Ambassador for Women, Peace and Security (WPS), as envisaged in Malta’s National Action Plan on the Implementation UNSCR 1325 (2000), launched in October 2020.

In October 2021, Ambassador Attard-Pirotta was re-appointed Ambassador of Malta to the State of Israel, and presented her credentials to President Isaac Herzog on December 16th, 2021.

Throughout her diplomatic career, Ambassador Attard-Pirotta has had to deal with several difficult situations, including affording assistance to Maltese nationals who found themselves in distress. Experiencing, first-hand, the terrorist bombings in Madrid´s Atocha train station early in 2004, assisting in locating individuals caught up the Southern Asian tsunami in December 2004, securing the repatriation of nationals caught up in Beirut in the 2007 Lebanon Conflict, as well as heading a delegation to Nigeria 2008 to secure the release of a Maltese national kidnapped in the Delta Region, were some of these difficult situations she had to deal with over the years.

Ambassador Attard-Pirotta graduated in 1988 with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Public Administration from the University of Malta; she then went on to read a Master in Diplomatic Studies, at the Mediterranean Academy for Diplomatic Studies in1990, and in 2017 she earned a Master of Arts (Hons) summa cum laude in Mediterranean Studies. The Ambassador is also an alumna of the International Visitor Programme of the United States Department of State and is a founding member of the Mediterranean Women Mediators Network.

Cecilia Attard-Pirotta was born in Sliema, Malta, and is married to Architect Ivan Attard.