Please join the Russia and Eurasia Program at The Fletcher School for a conversation with Ambassador Thomas Pickering about the current state of U.S.-Russia relations. Attendance is by registration only on Eventbrite. The event will be followed by a reception in Cheryl A. Chase Center. Refreshments will be provided.

Thomas Pickering has served as Vice Chairman of Hills and Company since 2016. He served as the U.S. Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations in New York under President George H.W. Bush. Pickering led the U.S. effort to build a global coalition in the UN Security Council during and after the first Gulf War. He also was the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President Bill Clinton. In a diplomatic career spanning five decades, he was U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. Pickering was Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Oceans, Environmental and Scientific Affairs, Executive Secretary of the Department of State, and Special Assistant to Secretaries of State William P. Rogers and Henry A. Kissinger.

After serving in government, Pickering was Senior Vice President International Relations of The Boeing Company and was briefly President of the Eurasia Foundation. In 2012, Pickering chaired the Benghazi Accountability Review Board at the U.S. State Department. Pickering holds a bachelor’s degree from Bowdoin College and a master’s degree from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. He received the Distinguished Presidential Award and the Department of State’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Award. He speaks French, Spanish, and Swahili and has some fluency in Arabic, Hebrew, and Russian.