Biden Taps Kaplan for Long-Vacant Singapore Envoy Post

  • The tech entrepreneur ventured into grilled cheese restaurants
  • Singapore post has been vacant for more than four years
Jonathan Kaplan in 2011.Photographer: Eric Risberg/AP Photo
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

President Joe Biden has selected tech entrepreneur Jonathan Kaplan to be the next U.S. ambassador to Singapore, planning to fill a position in the critical Pacific trade hub that hasn’t had a formal U.S. ambassador since the end of the Obama administration in early 2017.

Kaplan, whose appointment requires Senate confirmation, was CEO of Pure Digital Technologies when he invented the Flip video camera, according to a biography released by the White House. The company was soldBloomberg Terminal to Cisco in 2009 for $590 million.