Ambassador J. Stapleton Roy (“Stape”) retired from the Foreign Service in January 2001 after a career spanning 45 years with the U.S. Department of State. A fluent Chinese speaker, Mr. Roy spent much of his career in East Asia, where his assignments included Bangkok (twice), Hong Kong, Taipei, Beijing (twice), Singapore and Jakarta. He also specialized in Soviet affairs and served in Moscow at the height of the Cold War. Before taking up Russian studies, he was one of the first two Foreign Service Officers to study Mongolian. Mr. Roy rose to become a three-time ambassador, serving as the top U.S. envoy in Singapore (1984-86), the People’s Republic of China (1991-95), and Indonesia (1996-99). In 1996 he was promoted to the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest rank in the Foreign Service. Ambassador’s Roy’s final post with the State Department was as Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research. In 2001 he received Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson Award for Distinguished Public Service.

In January 2001 Ambassador Roy joined Kissinger Associates, Inc., a strategic consulting firm. He is currently Vice Chairman of the firm and works from offices in New York City and Washington, DC. Ambassador Roy is a director of Freeport McMoRan Copper & Gold. He also serves as Chairman of the Council for the Hopkins-Nanjing Center for Chinese and American Studies, Chairman of the International Advisory Council of the Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies of the Brookings Institution, and Chairman of the United States Asia Pacific Council. He is a Vice Chairman of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and a Trustee of The Asia Foundation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is on the boards of The Institute for the Study of Diplomacy of Georgetown University and the American Academy of Diplomacy. He is a Distinguished Senior Adviser to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Ambassador Roy was born in Nanjing, China of American missionary parents. In 1956, he graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University, where he majored in history and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.