Nguyen Phuong Nga was appointed to post as ambassador and permanent representative of Vietnam to the United Nations in 2014. She is a career civil servant, with past senior roles as deputy minister of foreign affairs between 2011 and 2014 and as ministry of foreign affairs' spokeswoman aka director general, department of press and information between 2007 and 2009. She has held senior appointments in Vietnam’s embassies in Belgium, Luxembourg and its mission to the European Union, Brussels. She was born in Hanoi and holds a master's in international journalism.