Eugene Staples's picture
Eugene Staples
Foundation Executive (Retired)

Eugene Staples was President of the Eurasia Foundation until he retired in April 1997. He was also a member of the original planning group for the Foundation’s structure and program. During his tenure, Mr. Staples held the positions of program vice president and president and chief executive officer. Prior to joining the Foundation’s planning staff in 1992, Mr. Staples was a foreign correspondent, a Foreign Service Officer and a Ford Foundation executive in New York and Asia. Mr. Staples served as Cultural Counselor in the American Embassy in Moscow from 1961 to 1964, has been a senior AID officer in both Washington and the field, and has taught at Columbia University. He served abroad for many years in Latin America, Europe, the former Soviet Union, and Asia. Earlier, he fought in World War II as a Marine Corps fighter pilot, serving in combat aboard the aircraft carrier Franklin which suffered heavy losses in a Japanese dive bomber attack off the coast of Kyushu.

Staples began his career after WWII as a United Press correspondent in Mexico and Central America. In the career Foreign Service, he served in such varied assignments as the Deputy General Manager of the great 1959 American national exhibition at Sokolniki Park in Moscow, the Cultural Counselor of the American Embassy in Moscow, and Director of the U.S. Agency for International Development Mission in Islamabad during the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. As a Ford Foundation executive, Staples oversaw the Foundation's overseas development work in Asia. He then served as the Foundation's representative in Southeast Asia, resident in Bangkok, and subsequently the representative for India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, resident in New Delhi.

Fluent in Spanish and Russian, Staples is a graduate of Mexico City College. He did intensive postgraduate work in Russian at the State Department's Foreign Service Institute and the U.S. Army "Detachment R" in Oberammergau, Germany. Staples has received a number of Presidential and other awards for his work. He is the recipient of the U.S. Agency for International Development distinguished honor award. For his work in development as the AID Mission Director in Islamabad, the Pakistan government awarded him its highest civil award, the Quaid-e-Izam.