William Courtney

William Courtney

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Former U.S. Ambassador to Georgia and Kazakhstan

William Courtney is an adjunct senior fellow at the RAND Corporation and executive director of the RAND Business Leaders Forum.  In 2014 he retired from Computer Sciences Corporation (now CSRA) as senior principal for federal policy strategy. From 1972 through 1999, he was a foreign service officer in the U.S. Department of State. He co-chaired the U.S. delegation to the review conference that prepared for the 1999 Summit in Istanbul of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe. He advised on the reorganization of U.S. foreign affairs agencies, mandated by the Foreign Affairs Reform Act of 1999. Earlier he served as special assistant to the President and senior director of the NSC staff for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia; ambassador to Georgia, Kazakhstan, and the U.S.-Soviet Bilateral Consultative Commission to implement the Threshold Test Ban Treaty; and deputy U.S. negotiator in the U.S.-Soviet Defense and Space Talks in Geneva.

Courtney served abroad in Brasilia, Moscow, Geneva, Almaty, and Tbilisi. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, where in 1977-78 he was an international affairs fellow. He is a member of the board of trustees of the Eurasia Foundation, and is a member and served on the boards of directors of the American Academy of Diplomacy and the World Affairs Council of Washington DC. He graduated from West Virginia University with a B.A. and Brown University with a Ph.D. in economics. He is married and has two children.

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