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Tom Pickering: Chat with former Ambassador Tom Pickering Founding Co-Chair of International Economic Alliance on key lessons for foreign market success
Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Ambassador Retired, joined Boeing in 2001 upon his retirement as US Under-Secretary of State for Political Affairs, a position he held since May 1997. He served as Senior Vice President of International Relations as a member of the Executive Council of The Boeing Company until July 1st 2006, where he oversaw the company's international affairs, including those with foreign governments. He has been a Senior Advisor for the company since. In December 2006, he became Vice Chair of Hills & Company, which provides advice and counsel to a number of major US corporations. Ambassador Pickering was briefly President of the Eurasia Foundation, a Washington-based organization that makes small grants and loans in the states of the former Soviet Union.

Pickering holds the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the US Foreign Service, and has served as US ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and Jordan in a diplomatic career spanning five decades. From 1989 to 1993, he served as Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations in New York, and from 1973 to 1974, as Executive Secretary of the Department of State and Special Assistant to Secretaries William P. Rogers and Henry A. Kissinger.

Pickering entered active duty in the U.S. Navy from 1956-1959, and later served in the Naval Reserve to the grade of Lieutenant Commander. Between 1959 and 1961, he was assigned to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department and later to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and from 1962 to 1964 in Geneva as political adviser to the U.S. Delegation to the 18-Nation Disarmament Conference.

He earned a Master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, a Bachelor's degree *** laude, with high honors in History from Bowdoin College. Ambassador Pickering was granted both the Distinguished Presidential Award and the State Department's highest award — the Distinguished Service Award. He is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations. He speaks French, Spanish and Swahili and has some fluency in Arabic, Hebrew and Russian.