Allan Phillip Mustard

Allan Phillip Mustard is a retired American agricultural economist and career diplomat who served as the United States Ambassador to Turkmenistan from 2015 to 2019. He was the chair of the OpenStreetMap Foundation from 2019 to 2021, and advises the Caspian Policy Center.

Early years

Mustard's father, Donald, was a veterinarian; his mother was a teacher. Mustard was raised on a dairy farm in Brady, In 1978 he graduated with BAs in Political Science, and in Slavic Languages and Literature, from the University of Washington, Seattle. Following his June 2019 retirement, he was succeeded by Matthew Klimow.

In June 2020 he was one of 612 former diplomats, senior military officers, and other government officials who signed an open letter expressing alarm at calls by President Donald Trump and others for the use of U.S. military personnel to end Black Lives Matter protests on U.S. soil.

Support for open content projects

During his ambassadorship in Turkmenistan, Mustard was a proponent of OpenStreetMap, as well as an active volunteer mapper. He has described his mapping efforts as a response to the dearth of available geographic and political information in the country, following the example of the Royal Geographical Society in Central Asia in the 19th century. At the North American Cartographic Information Society's annual banquet in 2019, he gave a keynote address on his mapping in Turkmenistan. He keynoted OpenStreetMap's annual global conference, State of the Map, in 2016 and 2020 and the conference's European edition in 2023. He was elected to the board of the OpenStreetMap Foundation in December 2019 and served as chair until 2021.

He describes himself as a Wikipedian.

Awards and honors

Mustard has received the United States Department of Agriculture's Distinguished Honor Award (the agency's highest); and its Superior Honor Award (twice); as well as the Grand Decoration of Merit in Gold of the Republic of Austria (the country's highest for a foreigner). They have one daughter.

He sits on the advisory board of the Caspian Policy Center.

Mustard speaks Russian, German, and "basic Spanish".