Janis Karklins currently serves as the Director of NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence. Before assuming duties as the Director of the Centre of Excellence for Strategic Communications, Ambassador Kārkliņš served as the Assistant Director General of Communication and Information of UNESCO.  Ambassador Kārkliņš has a long career in the Latvian diplomatic service. He has served as the Latvian Ambassador to France, Andorra, Monaco and UNESCO after being the Permanent Representative of Latvia to the United Nations in Geneva. 

During his stay in Geneva he presided over the Preparatory Committee of the Tunis Phase of the World Summit on the Information Society. He also served as a Chairman of the Council of the International Organization for Migration (IOM). He has held several elected posts in the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and UN Commission of Science and Technology for Development, as well as presided over the Group of Governmental Experts on Cluster Munitions within the framework of the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW). 

Ambassador Kārkliņš represented Latvia in the Governmental Advisory Committee of ICANN and Chaired this Committee from 2007 until June 2010, at the same time being a member of ICANN Board of Directors. 

Prior to the posting in Geneva, he served as the Under-secretary of State in the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He also worked as Counsellor in the Latvian Embassies in both France and Finland. He has an engineering degree from the Riga Technical University in Latvia and attended an Executive Education Program for Eastern European diplomats at the Hoover Institute at Stanford University in the USA.