Hills and Company
Thomas Pickering serves as Vice Chairman of Hills and Company, a firm that provides consultation to American businesses looking to invest abroad. Ambassador Pickering took this position after retiring from the Boeing Company, where he worked as Senior Vice President of International Relations for five years.
He joined Boeing in January 2001 upon his retirement as U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs. In this position, Mr. Pickering oversaw the company's international affairs, including those with foreign governments.
Mr. Pickering served as U.S. under secretary of state for political affairs since May 1997. Prior to that, he served briefly as the president of Eurasia Foundation.
Mr. Pickering held the personal rank of career ambassador, the highest in the U.S. foreign service. In a diplomatic career spanning five decades, he has served as U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Mr. Pickering also served on assignments in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
From 1989 to 1993, he served as U.S. ambassador and representative to the United Nations in New York. Another notable assignment was Mr. Pickering's service as executive secretary of the Department of State and special assistant to Secretary William P. Rogers and Secretary Henry A. Kissinger from 1973 to 1974.
Mr. Pickering's service to the U.S. government began in 1956 in the U.S. Navy. On active duty until 1959, he later served in the naval reserve as lieutenant commander. Between 1959 and 1961, he served in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department, in the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency and as political adviser to the U.S. delegation to the 18-Nation Disarmament Conference from 1962 to 1964 in Geneva.
Mr. Pickering received a bachelor's degree, cum laude, with high honors in history, from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1953. In 1954, he received a master's degree from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to the University of Melbourne in Australia and received a second master's degree in 1956. In 1984, he earned an honorary doctorate-in-law degree from Bowdoin College, and has received similar honors from 12 other universities.
In 1983 and in 1986, Mr.Pickering won the Distinguished Presidential Award and in 1996, the State Department's Distinguished Service Award. He is a member of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and the Council on Foreign Relations. He speaks French, Spanish, Swahili, Arabic and Hebrew.
