William Braucher Wood (born August 7, 1950) is the U.S. Envoy for International Sanctions Implementation at the Department of State. He is a former Ambassador from the United States of America to the

Islamic Republic of Afghanistan The Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was a presidential republic that ruled Afghanistan from 2004 to 2021. The state was established to replace the Afghan interim (2001–2002) and transitional (2002–2004) administrations, which were formed ...

and

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

. William B. Wood presented his credentials on April 16, 2007, to the

President of Afghanistan The president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan was constitutionally the head of state and head of government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (2004–2021) and Commander-in-Chief of the Afghan Armed Forces. On 15 August 2021, as t ...

Hamid Karzai Hamid Karzai (; Pashto/ fa, حامد کرزی, , ; born 24 December 1957) is an Afghan statesman who served as the fourth president of Afghanistan from July 2002 to September 2014, including as the first elected president of the Islamic Repub ...

, and was received as the U.S. Ambassador to that nation, replacing the former US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Ronald E. Neumann. Ambassador Wood was the US Ambassador to

from 2003 to 2007, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State and Acting Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of International Organization Affairs, with responsibility for all aspects of U.S. foreign policy at the United Nations and a number of other multilateral organizations from 1998 to 2002. Immediately before that assignment, Mr. Wood was Political Counselor at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where he was the chief U.S. negotiator in the Security Council.

Career

Ambassador William B. Wood has been a professional foreign service officer for more than 25 years. He has served abroad in

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

, Argentina,

El Salvador El Salvador (; , meaning " The Saviour"), officially the Republic of El Salvador ( es, República de El Salvador), is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south b ...

, Italy, as part of the U.S. negotiating delegation at the 1992 CSCE Helsinki Summit, and as lead U.S. negotiator at the

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

High Level Task Force on conventional arms control. In Washington, he has served on the policy planning staff for Latin America, as a special assistant in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, as an expert in Latin American affairs on the staff of the Under Secretary for Political Affairs, and on a number of functional and regional desks. His other areas of expertise include multilateral affairs, peacekeeping operations, conventional arms control, economic development, and politico-military affairs. Ambassador Wood has received the Department of State's meritorious and superior honor awards on repeated occasions. In 1998 he received the James Clement Dunn Award for Excellence for his work at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. In 2002, he received the Distinguished Service Award, the highest award offered by the Department of State.

Life

After graduating from Regis High School in New York City in 1968, Wood received a Bachelor of Arts degree in

Philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

from

Bucknell University Bucknell University is a private liberal arts college in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1846 as the University at Lewisburg, it now consists of the College of Arts and Sciences, Freeman College of Management, and the College of Engineering. ...

in 1973 and a

Master of Business Administration A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

degree, with a specialization in

international finance International finance (also referred to as international monetary economics or international macroeconomics) is the branch of financial economics broadly concerned with monetary and macroeconomic interrelations between two or more countries. Inter ...

, from the

George Washington University , mottoeng = "God is Our Trust" , established = , type = Private federally chartered research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.8 billion (2022) , preside ...

in 1975.

References

* www.state.gov

External links

Official site of the U.S. Embassy-Kabul

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Wood, William Braucher 1950 births Living people Ambassadors of the United States to Afghanistan Bucknell University alumni George Washington University School of Business alumni Ambassadors of the United States to Colombia Regis High School (New York City) alumni United States Foreign Service personnel 21st-century American diplomats