Walter and Leonore Annenberg Excellence in Diplomacy Award

The Walter and Leonore Annenberg Award for Excellence in Diplomacy is an annual award given by the American Academy of Diplomacy in recognition of an individual or group who has made exemplary contributions to the field of American diplomacy. It is the Academy’s highest honor and its purpose is to highlight the important contribution of all aspects of diplomacy to the nation’s business.

The Award is presented at the Academy’s Annual Awards Luncheon at the State Department in the fall, during which the recipient acts as keynote speaker. Recipients of the Annenberg Award are recommended by the Academy’s Executive Committee and are approved by the Board of Directors.

Secretary William J. Perry, Annenberg Award recipient, accepting his award at the 2017 Awards Luncheon.

Recipients of the Annenberg Award:

2022: Thomas R. Pickering
U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, U.S. Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

2021: Foreign Service and Civil Service Personnel of the U.S. Government Who Served in the Viet Nam Evacuation

2021: All U.S. Government Personnel Engaged in the Evacuation of Afghanistan

2020: Jimmy Carter
39th President, 76th Governor of Georgia, former Georgia Senator, and Carter Center co-founder

2019: John Negroponte
Deputy Secretary of State, Director of National Intelligence, Ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations, and Iraq

2018: James A. Baker, III
13th and 19th White House Chief of Staff and 61st United States Secretary of State

2017: William J. Perry
The 19th United States Secretary of Defense

2016: Robert B. Zoellick
Former World Bank Group President & U.S. Trade Representative

2015: William J. Burns
Under Secretary of State

2014: Carla A. Hills
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

2013: George P. Shultz
Secretary of State

2012: Richard G. Lugar
Senator

Hal Saunders Annenberg Award
Hal Saunders with Academy Chairman and President Thomas Pickering (L) and Ronald Neumann (R)

2011: Robert Gates
Secretary of Defense

2010: Harold Saunders
Director of international affairs, the Kettering Foundation

2009: William Lacy Swing
Director General, International Organization for Migration (IOM)

2008: Ryan C. Crocker
Ambassador to Iraq

2007: Christopher Hill
Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

2006: Max M. Kampelman
Head of the United States Delegation to the Negotiations with the Soviet Union on Nuclear and Space Arms

2005: Men and Women of the Foreign and Civil Service
Accepted by Under Secretary R. Nicholas Burns

2004: Joseph J. Sisco
Former Undersecretary of State

2003: John Danforth
Former Senator

2002 Secretary Colin Powell, Senator Lugar 1
Secretary Colin Powell, with Academy Chairman Joseph Sisco and Senator Richard Lugar
2001 Excellence in Diplomacy Award Kofi Annan with Chairman Joe Sisco
Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan and his wife Nane Annan, with Chairman Joseph Sisco

2002: Colin L. Powell
Secretary of State

2001: Kofi Annan
UN Secretary-General

2000: Richard Lugar & Sam Nunn
Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program

1999: Stuart Eizenstat
Deputy Secretary of the Treasury

1998: George Mitchell
Peace Negotiations on Northern Ireland

1997: George F. Kennan
Lifetime Contributions to Diplomacy

1996: Dennis Ross
Special Middle East Coordinator

1996: Richard Holbrooke
Dayton Peace Accords on Bosnia

1995: Robert Gallucci
Ambassador-at-Large; North Korean Negotiations

1994: General John Vessey (USA, ret.)
President Emissary to Hanoi for missing American servicemen

1993: Robert Oakley
Special Envoy to Somalia

1991: Vernon Walters
Ambassador to Germany

1990: Thomas Pickering
Ambassador to the United Nations

1989: Rozanne Ridgway
Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs

1988: Stephen W. Bosworth
Ambassador to the Philippines

Walter and Leonore Annenberg

Walter and Leonore Annenberg, founders of the Annenberg Foundation

Recipient

Thomas R. Pickering

U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, U.S. Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations, U.S. Ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Winner of the 2022 Walter and Leonore Annenberg Award for Excellence in Diplomacy

Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering served as the U.S. Ambassador and Representative to the United Nations in New York under President George H.W. Bush. Tom led the U.S. effort to build a global coalition in the UN Security Council during and after the first Gulf War. He also served as the U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under President Bill Clinton.

Tom holds the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the U.S. Foreign Service. 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. He also served on assignments in Zanzibar and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. In Washington, Tom 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 government, he was the Senior Vice President, International Relations, of The Boeing Company. In this role, Tom was responsible for Boeing’s relations with foreign governments and the company’s transition to a global organization. Prior to that, he was briefly the president of the Eurasia Foundation, a Washington-based organization that makes small grants and loans in the states of the former Soviet Union.

In 2012, Tom chaired the Benghazi Accountability Review Board at the State Department.

In 1956, Tom entered into active duty in the U.S. Navy, and later served in the Naval Reserve to the grade of Lieutenant Commander. He was assigned to the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the State Department, later to the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and served in Geneva as political adviser to the U.S. Delegation to the 18-Nation Disarmament Conference.

Tom serves as a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is active in a number of not-for-profit boards, including the International Crisis Group, where he was previously Chairman and Co-Chairman of the Board; the current Chairman of the Boards of the American Academy of Diplomacy, the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs, and the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. He has been a Trustee at the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Institute, among other organizations. Tom maintains close, high-level contacts in all the countries in which he has served, as well as in Europe.

He received a bachelor’s degree, cum laude, with high honors in history, from Bowdoin College. Tom 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 there. Tom received an honorary doctor-in-laws degree from Bowdoin College, and has received similar honors from 12 other universities.

He received the Distinguished Presidential Award and the Department of State’s highest award, the Distinguished Service Award. Tom is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute of Strategic Studies. He speaks French, Spanish, and Swahili and has some fluency in Arabic, Hebrew, and Russian.