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.

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: 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

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: 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, 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.