Linda E. Watt has been the Chief Operating Officer of the Episcopal Church since January 2007.  She coordinates the programmatic, financial, operational, and communications efforts of the headquarters of the Church, located in New York City and various regional offices.  The Episcopal Church comprises 110 dioceses in the United States and 14 foreign countries, and has 2.4 million members.

Ambassador Watt serves on the Board of Directors of Episcopal Relief and Development and on the Board of Directors of Pro Mujer, a nonprofit microlending and human development organization for poor women in Latin America. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Foreign Service Association, the New York Women’s Forum, and the Belizean Grove, a selective network of senior women leaders in the corporate, governmental, and non-profit sectors. 

In her earlier career, Ambassador Watt was a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Department of State.  She served as US Ambassador to Panama from 2002 to 2005. She was acting Ambassador in the Dominican Republic from 1997 to late 1999 and was the Foreign Policy Advisor to the Commander, U.S Southern Command, in 2001 and 2002. She also  served at American Embassies in Nicaragua, the United Kingdom, Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Russia, and in the Department of State's bureaus of Western Hemisphere Affairs and Near Eastern/South Asian Affairs.

During her Foreign Service career, Ambassador Watt's special interests encompassed anti-corruption, competitiveness, economic development and poverty alleviation, and the role of women as leaders in business and government in the developing world. A hallmark of her Foreign Service career was what she terms "Marketing America," highlighting the global leadership of US business and promoting the importance of international engagement by academic, charitable, religious, and civic organizations.

In the Dominican Republic, she supported local chapters of Women in International Trade and of Vital Voices. In Panama, she established an annual award for "Unsung Heroines" to highlight the contributions of women leaders.
Ambassador Watt encouraged the establishment of study abroad programs, initiated a ground-breaking "People-to-People" program to link U.S. and Panamanian non-government organizations, and supported alumni and outreach programs of prestigious U.S. universities including Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, Notre Dame, Penn, and Georgetown. Ambassador Watt has special expertise in strategic planning and crisis management.

Ambassador Watt received the Secretary of State's Career Achievement Award, the U.S Coast Guard's Distinguished Public Service Award, the Order of Vasco Nunez de Balboa (Panama), the Department of Defense's Civilian Meritorious Service Award, and the Superior Honor and Meritorious Honor Awards from the Department of State. She received the Carnation Award for Lifetime Achievement from Gamma Phi Beta Sorority in 2008.  She holds a B.A. (History and Spanish) from Vanderbilt University and an M.A. (Latin American Studies) from the University of New Mexico. She was a Fellow of Seminar XXI (Foreign Politics, International Relations, and the National Interest), Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1996-97, and is a graduate of the State Department’s Senior Seminar, 2000-2001. 

Ambassador Watt lives in New York City and St. George, Utah, with her husband, Leo Duncan.  She has two children:  Tom Crosby, a student at Duke University School of Law, and Laurie Crosby, a graduate student in community counseling at Marymount University, Arlington, VA.