President Joe Biden on Friday announced he's nominating University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann to serve as U.S. ambassador to Germany

       Gutmann has served since 2004 as president of the Ivy League university in Philadelphia where Biden had established a foreign policy center following his vice presidency.

       She is the first U.S. ambassador pick to a Group of Seven nation. Her nomination was announced less than two weeks before German Chancellor Angela Merkel is set to make a final visit to the White House. She is scheduled to leave office following German parliamentary elections scheduled for September.

       The White House also announced Biden was nominating Chantale Wong, who has served several appointments in the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama administrations, to serve as ambassador to the Asian Development Bank; Jeffrey Hovenier, a career senior foreign officer, to serve as ambassador to Kosovo; and Virginia Palmer, a career senior foreign service, to serve as ambassador to Ghana.

       All the nominees require Senate confirmation before they can assume their posts.

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