William C. Eacho III was sworn in as U.S. Ambassador to Austria on August 12, 2009. Before that, he was a successful business manager and entrepreneur with a history of active civic engagement.
Most recently, Mr. Eacho managed a diverse portfolio of public equity, private equity, and real estate investments as CEO of Carlton Capital Group, LLC in Bethesda, MD. In 1998, Mr. Eacho was Executive Vice President of Alliant Foodservice Inc., then a $6 billion national foodservice distributor headquartered in Deerfield, Illinois. He joined Alliant upon selling Alliant his business, Atlantic Food Services, a leading regional foodservice distribution company based in Manassas, Virginia, with annual revenues over $200 million. In 1989, Atlantic was recognized as the industry's Innovator of the Year by ID Magazine, and in 1994 received ID's Great Distributor Organization Award. Mr. Eacho was the founding co-Chairman of UniPro Foodservice, Inc., the foodservice distribution industry's leading international procurement and marketing cooperative. From 1996-1997 he served as Chairman of ComSource, an industry cooperative.
Mr. Eacho received a Master's degree in Business Administration with Distinction from Harvard Business School in 1979. Prior to attending Harvard, he was a Financial Analyst in the Corporate Finance department of Hornblower & Weeks, Hemphill-Noyes, Inc., in New York, and was an Associate with Loeb-Rhoades, Hornblower & Company in Los Angeles. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where he majored in Law and the Economy, a self-designed major combining political science and economics, and wrote his thesis on the use of banking regulatory oversight as a tool to influence economic activity.
Following a long-standing tradition established by previous U.S. ambassadors, he is also an ex officio member on the Board of Directors of the Salzburg Global Seminar. Mr. Eacho also served on the boards of Stanley Martin Companies, Inc., Bialek Corporation, Inc. and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington. He also served as Chairman of the Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington, and as its Acting CEO. He served on the Board of Visitors of Duke University's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences, and was a member of World President's Organization and Chief Executives Organization. He was the former Washington, D.C. Chapter Chair of the Young Presidents Organization.
He also was a member of Business Executives for National Security, the Brookings Council, and the Economic Club of Washington. In these organizations and in other activities, Mr. Eacho supported efforts to address the challenges of climate change.
Mr. Eacho served as a member of the Trustees Advisory Council of the OneVoice Movement, an organization dedicated to promoting moderate voices among Israelis and Palestinians and a peaceful, two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. During the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign, Mr. Eacho helped raise funds for the campaign of the Democratic Party candidate, then-Senator Barack Obama.
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