Belaynesh Zevadia

Belaynesh Zevadia was born in 1967 in Semien Gondar Zone

Belaynesh Zevadia was born on April 21, 1967, in a village in the Gondar region of Ethiopia, to a Jewish family. Her father, Gete Zevadia, led the village community and served as its kes. She studied at an ORT school and later attended high school in Addis Ababa.

She immigrated to Israel in 1984 at 17, during Operation Moses, after finishing high school. In Jerusalem she studied Hebrew at an ulpan and then worked there with immigrants from Ethiopia. She earned a bachelor's degree in international relations and African studies and a master's degree in anthropology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In 1993 she joined the Foreign Ministry cadet course, the first immigrant from Ethiopia to do so. She served as Israel's consul in Chicago from 1996 to 2002 and as deputy consul general in Houston from 2005 to 2010. In 2012 she became ambassador to Ethiopia, the first Ethiopian immigrant to serve as an Israeli ambassador, and was also accredited to Rwanda and Burundi.

As ambassador she worked on economic, medical and agricultural cooperation between the two countries. She later headed the Southern Africa division of the Foreign Ministry. She lit a torch at the 2014 Independence Day ceremony, and she married Sarkalem Agedech in 2000. They have a daughter and twins and live in French Hill.