Ambassador Thomas Pickering - Co-Chairman | Biography

Ambassador Pickering is the vice chairman at Hills and Co., an international consulting firm. His work with the US government began in 1956 with the US Navy and was followed by positions with the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He has served as a political adviser in Geneva to the US delegation to the Eighteen-Nation Disarmament Conference; consul in Zanzibar; deputy chief of mission in Tanzania; deputy director of the Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs; executive secretary of the State Department and special assistant to Secretaries William P. Rogers and Henry A. Kissinger; assistant secretary of state for oceans and international environmental and scientific affairs; undersecretary of state for political affairs. He was also president of the Eurasia Foundation 1996-97.

Ambassador Pickering’s diplomatic career has spanned five decades, encompassing service as ambassador to Russia, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. He represented the United States as ambassador and representative to the United Nations in New York and holds the personal rank of career ambassador, the highest in the US Foreign Service. He was senior vice president of international relations of the Boeing Company from January 2001 until July 2006. Ambassador Pickering received a bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College and master’s degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and the University of Melbourne in Australia. He holds honorary doctorate degrees from Bowdoin College and fourteen other universities and is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations.