BIOGRAPHY W. Stuart Symington Ambassador, Djibouti Term of Appointment: 08/18/2006 to present

Mr. Symington was raised in Missouri, earned a bachelor's degree from Brown University and a Juris Doctorate from Columbia University. He clerked for the Chief Judge of the Eastern District of Missouri, then litigated and practiced corporate law in New York, London, Paris, and St. Joseph, Missouri, before becoming a Foreign Service Officer in 1986. He began his diplomatic career by tracking protests and politics in Honduras. He moved to Spain and worked on economic issues before serving as the Ambassador's aide during Desert Shield and Storm.

In Mexico, Mr. Symington cultivated the political opposition, worked anti-drug issues, helped congressional visitors looking at NAFTA, and reported from Chiapas during the Zapatista revolt. At the State Department, he worked for the Under Secretary for Political Affairs on Latin American and African issues, backing up as his aide for Bosnia. During a yearlong Pearson Fellowship, he served on the staff of Congressman Ike Skelton studying U.S. military joint operations and education. He later traveled to Sudan and North Korea on teams negotiating to free American captives before finishing the year as an aide to the U.S. permanent representative to the UN. As a political officer in Ecuador, he forged ties to the political opposition, indigenous leaders, military commanders, and other government and private sector leaders. Mr. Symington joined efforts to end the century-old Peru/Ecuador border conflict; helped negotiate the agreement establishing an anti-drug Forward Operating Location; after protests toppled Ecuador's president, pressed for a return to civilian rule.